


We Who Have The Souls

by freedomworm



Series: A Wounded Deer Leaps Highest [3]
Category: Hunter X Hunter
Genre: Action/Adventure, Alternate Universe - Post-Canon, Canon-Typical Violence, Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-03-03
Updated: 2018-03-15
Packaged: 2018-09-28 03:24:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 20,337
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10069001
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/freedomworm/pseuds/freedomworm
Summary: It was raining on the day that the message arrived for Illumi, an unexpected line of text from Father that read simply: It is time for Killua to come home.With instructions from his father to find Killua, Illumi goes in search for his brother, but the journey to find Killua holds unexpected twists and turns and after twenty years apart, what will happen when they finally come face to face?





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> About a week after I first published the sequel to "The Horror Not To Be Surveyed", "Amethyst Remembrance", an anon on tumblr actually sent me a poem prompt for a new fic: #314 by Emily Dickinson.
> 
> The poem goes like this:  
>  __  
> "Nature –sometimes sears a Sapling—  
>  Sometimes –scalps a Tree—  
> Her Green People recollect it  
> When they do not die—
> 
> Fainter Leaves –to Further Seasons—  
> Dumbly testify—  
> We –who have the Souls  
> Die oftener –Not so vitally—"  
> 
> 
> \--WHICH, frankly, is SO good for HxH. I've been working on this fic off and on since then, but for inexplicable reasons that are frustrating even to me, I haven't finished this fic yet (even though I desperately want to). So, to push myself, I decided to just start posting this as a multi-chapter fic, rather than trying to churn out a oneshot like the other two works in this series. It's been a while since I've watched HxH, but hopefully my characterizations are too off here. If you enjoy this and want to see more, please let me know! Comments keep me motivated. :) Lastly, this series diverges from canon after the events of the HxH 2011 anime. Thanks for reading & enjoy!

_Kalluto raised his arm slowly and pointed at Illumi. "You're different."_

_Illumi threw back the rest of his drink, feeling the slow burn of the whiskey as it slid down his throat. "Older," he agreed._

_Kalluto made a noise –some derisive snort he had picked up from one of his Ryodan colleagues –Feitan, Illumi decided with disdain. "No," he said, "That's not what I mean. You've been away from home too long. That's not a bad thing."_

_Illumi didn't meet his eye, and instead turned to look at the flames crackling in the fireplace before them. The orange-yellow glow of the fire danced across the walls and altered the light and shadows that patterned Illumi's face._

_In the armchair next to him, Kalluto did not continue, but his words echoed in Illumi's mind, and he thought,_ what do you know?

 

#

It was raining on the day that the message arrived for Illumi, an unexpected line of text from Father that read simply: _It is time for Killua to come home_.

Illumi stared at the dimly lit screen of his phone specially reserved for family communications, and he closed out the message screen, ignoring the unusual bitter taste in his mouth as he carefully set the phone on the counter.

He glanced sideways, out the window. The apartment overlooked most of the city, but outside, the heavy droplets of autumn rain pattered against the roof and streaked down the window panes, obscuring the high rise view.

"I'm leaving tomorrow," Illumi announced when Hisoka returned to the kitchen with the wine he'd gone to fetch.

Hisoka raised an eyebrow, no doubt having noticed the cellphone that lay screen-down on the table by Illumi's hand. "Job?" He asked calmly, summoning two wine glasses to the kitchen island using _Bungee Gum_ and then pouring Illumi a glass, pushing it over.

Illumi accepted the drink and stared into the crimson ripples of the wine. "Not the usual kind," he said.

Hisoka raised his glasses to his lips, sipping slowly. "Well," he said, "Will you need assistance?"

"I do not think your presence will expedite the mission," Illumi said, feeling his mouth pull into a tight frown. When Hisoka poured, mocking offense, Illumi added: "I am to bring Killua back to Kukuroo Mountain." He looked away, as if uninterested, but in truth, wishing to avoid the look of comprehension in Hisoka's eyes. Illumi's gaze drifted back to the window, this time out across the overcast skies. From Illumi's penthouse suite in Qicheng, he could make out most of the city, and the seaport to the west. The waves at the docks were high from the rain and wind, but farther out, the waters were calm.

"Killua has not been home in twenty years," Illumi said, "But my father still has faith that he can be made heir of our family's business." He pressed his lips together quickly, and knew that Hisoka had noticed the uncharacteristically bitter edge to the latter admission.

"Where will you go first?" Hisoka asked.

Illumi picked up his wine glass and drank deeply, swishing the bittersweet liquid around in his mouth before swallowing. "Yorknew City," he decided. "I will need to retrieve Kalluto."

 

#

When the Phantom Troupe was not gathered for a heist, and he was not assigned an assassination job, Kalluto lived in a suite overlooking Center Park in the Heong District of Yorknew .

Despite having lived for his first ten years strictly by their mother's side, Kalluto's integration into outside society had been a fluid one. Illumi supposed that the difference in their dispositions was that Kalluto, upon leaving home, had traveled abroad for nearly a year at the side of the Phantom Troupe, whereas Illumi had continued to stay within the confines of the Zoldyck estate when he was not taking a job.

That said, Kalluto's home was decorated with a distinct taste for what was both beautiful and delicate; he had vases and statuettes on display, and a window in his kitchen was replaced with stained glass. Illumi suspected, after a glance around the open-room apartment confirmed the mismatched origin of the objects, that Kalluto's décor was largely picked up during his travels away from Yorknew.

"So, Father wants Killua back now," Kalluto said after leading the way into the living area. He glanced at Hisoka, who had wandered away almost at once to inspect a porcelain mask that hung on one wall. It was a woman's face, her eyes closed and long eyelashes spread out over high cheekbones. There were dark blue cracks running along her cheeks, downward in thin networks. She looked like she was crying.

Illumi looked back from Hisoka to Kalluto. "His message was clear: 'it is time for Killua to come home'."

Kalluto nodded slowly, folding his arms. "I can ask the _Ryodan_ what they might have heard through their networks. I haven't heard a whisper of Killua's whereabouts in years, although, it's possible…" He trailed off and pursed his lips, frowning slightly.

Illumi waited.

"The last I heard, Gon Freecss had departed for the Dark Continent. Perhaps Killua followed."

"I saw him," Illumi said.

"Freecss?"

"Killua. I saw him in..." He trailed off, and shook his head. "That was years ago. It doesn't matter anymore." It was too long ago to be relevant.

"So, we have no way of knowing where to begin searching for Killua. We're off to a great start." Kalluto said. He paused. "That was sarcasm."

"I understand the concept," Illumi said shortly.

They considered their options for a moment.

"Have you tried _messaging_ Killua?"

Kalluto and Illumi turned and stared at Hisoka, who shrugged, and turned back to stare at a shimmering, black tapestry that hung on a panel of Kalluto's wall and seemed to have a crimson glint under the fluorescent lights in the room.

"Just a thought," Hisoka said.

Illumi looked back at Kalluto. "Do you have his phone number?"

He shook his head, but said, "If Killua is an active Hunter, his contact information would be in the Hunter Database, wouldn't it?"

"The Database is unorganized," Hisoka said, speaking up once more. He left the souvenir collections behind, striding across the room to join Illumi and Kalluto where they stood. "To find Killua, you must find Gon or" –he paused and his eyes met Illumi's. "We must find Gon," he repeated.

Kalluto's mouth twitched into an almost-frown. "How?" he said. "We don't know where _he_ is, either."

A Cheshire cat grin spread across Hisoka's face and he allowed a moment's pause where he smugly took in the feeling of anticipation that hung in the air. Then he said: " _I_ know where Gon Freecss is."

 

#

Illumi had not been to any fighters' tournaments since the Glory Tournament in Kukanyu over a decade ago. Before that, the only fixed matches he had fought in were during the Hunter Exam and those at Heaven's Arena. He was not Hisoka; he found little excitement in drawing out a fight. Fights were dirty –sweaty –bloody –and what Illumi craved was the thrill of the actions itself. He loved the strategy, the mental alertness a good fight required. He liked the feeling of his blood singing in his veins and the way –if he met an opponent worthy enough –adrenalin would send his heart thudding against his chest.

Fighters' tournaments attracted thugs and cowards, and scrawny thieves who somewhere along the lines had decided that they stood a chance. The tournaments brought out of the woodwork all sorts of brutes who turned combat into something graceless and vulgar –a clumsy dance at best.

As they made their way through the city of Port Carucula, Illumi eyed with distaste the dozens upon dozens of flyers pinned on walls and vendor stands.

'ANCIENT CHAMPIONS TOURNAMENT', the flyers declared, announcing the winnings –treasure chests of recovered, valuable artifacts from the sea –and the nearly-absurd entry fee.

"You're certain Freecss is here?" Illumi said. He wasn't doubting so much as he was complaining about Freecss' character flaws –namely, entering tournaments for brutes.

Hisoka's eyes slid from side to side as he examined the street around them. There was a faint curve to his lips that spoke of the excitement that was beginning to build up inside of him. If they didn't find Freecss within the hour, Hisoka would no doubt slink off on his own to find an opponent to fight –and then where would they be?

It was Kalluto who responded: "He's here," he said, adding with a slight jutting of his chin, "There."

Up ahead the crowd was thicker and consisted of larger, rowdier men –contestants, obviously. They had formed a ring which could mean only one thing: a fight had broken out in the street.

As Illumi, Kalluto, and Hisoka approached, it became apparent that in the midst of the brawl was Gon, dodging swings from a man easily eight feet tall, with arms the size of tree trunks. Even without _nen_ and at a physical disadvantage, though, Gon Freeccs was winning.

At thirty-one, Gon was a dark tan from days under the sun. There were scars all along his exposed forearms, a couple of them new, puckered-pink, but most old, pale –faded. Gon fought with a fierce grin and fluid footwork, a fighter who was comfortable in his skin, who knew how to use his strength to lethal effect –even if he _was_ all but playing with his opponent at the moment.

At Illumi's side, Hisoka stepped closer to the ring of onlookers and when Gon sidestepped another sharp left hook, he seemed to glimpse them in the crowd. His distraction nearly earned him a broken jaw, but Gon's focus turned back to the fight at the last moment and he bent backwards with a "whoa!". Then he straightened up, curled his fist, and retaliated with a series of lightning-fast punches to his opponent's ribcage, followed by a roundhouse kick to the side of his head that landed with a sickening _thwack!_

The crowd fell silent in awe. The giant man didn't seem to know what had hit him, blinking down slowly at Gon in a daze before dropping to his knees and slumping forward in a move that Illumi could feel vibrate through the ground.

Gon raised a fist in the air and half the crowd roared its approval while the other half groaned. Money soon began exchanging hands, but Gon barely paid it any attention, making his way to where Illumi, Hisoka, and Kalluto stood watching.

There was a cautiousness about Gon when his eyes fell upon Illumi, but he didn't seem bothered to see Hisoka or even Kalluto. Illumi remembered Hisoka mentioning, years ago, that the boy no longer had use of _nen_ , and perhaps that was why Gon did not seem threatened by Hisoka's presence –because he knew that the fight Hisoka had once hoped for would be unlikely to ever take place. He grinned, tying back his hair and wiping the back of his hand across his sweaty forehead.

Illumi frowned.

"Hisoka," Gon said, "Are you here for the tournament?"

"Hardly," Hisoka said with a shrug.

Gon nodded. "Me neither," he said, laughing shortly, but he didn't explain himself further. "So, what are you doing here?" he asked instead. His eyes locked with Illumi's as he did so, even though he was still turned toward HIsoka.

"I'm searching for Killua." Illumi said.

"Huh," The smile remained on Gon's face, but there was a hard, assessing look in his eyes. "Well, he's not in Port Carucula," he said, refusing to give anything up.

 _Very well_ , Illumi thought. Gon wanted him to be the first to offer something up, to stand down or yield, but Illumi did not consider this a challenge in any regards. He had a mission, and Gon was not his concern. "I am aware of that," Illumi said evenly, "We" –he glanced sideways to Hisoka and Kalluto – "thought you might be able to offer some insight into where Killua can be found."

Gon made a face. "If I knew that, why would I tell you?"

"So you're saying you don't know?" Kalluto interjected.

"What do you want from Killua?" Gon said. He was still looking solely at Illumi.

"It's not what I want, specifically," Illumi replied, "It's what our father wants."

That gave Gon pause. The hard look in his eyes faltered; if he knew Killua, then of course he knew that Killua was not so resentful toward Father as he was toward others in the family. "Well, then..." Gon said, "Why is your father looking for Killua, then?"

"It's hardly your place to ask," Kalluto began, but Illumi answered plainly:

"Killua is the Zoldyck heir. He's long overdue to begin taking that position seriously, and our father's desire for him to return no doubt has to do with preparing Killua to take over as patriarch."

Gon snorted. "So? What makes you think Killua would just go back with you, huh? You think he wants to be heir?"

Illumi blinked in response. Of course he knew that Killua would mostly likely have to be convinced, and even if he went home, he might not agree to become heir, after all, but: "Father wants Killua to return home," he said, "And so we will do what he wishes."

Gon made another face at that, a scrunch-nosed expression that could either express distaste or incredulity. "You know if you try to force Killua back, he can more than kick your ass these days," he said.

"Does that mean you know where he is, after all?" Kalluto demanded, an edge of frustration to his voice.

Gon looked over at him and crossed his arms, "I might have an idea," he said, "But I won't tell you."

"Freecss—"

"Oh, don't fret, Kalluto," Hisoka purred, piping up after all that time. "Gon will _show_ us the way, won't you, Gon?"

Gon nodded shortly. "It'd be irresponsible of me to just _tell_ you where to find Killua –who knows what you'd try to do? I'm coming with you."


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I called this the Tree Chapter. You'll see why.
> 
> Also: I don't have a beta right now, so if you notice that there's a grammar/spelling mistake or just some funky sentence structures, I deeply apologize in advance.

True to his word, Gon led them out of Port Caracula without any indication as to where he was taking them.

Illumi, Hisoka, and Kalluto had arrived along the coast by train, but Gon led them to the small harbor beyond the pier to where a small yacht was docked. It was named the _Jajan_ , a concept that was so ridiculous, it was somehow suitable.

Gon climbed down onto the boat and waved at them to do the same.

"Do you _live_ on this?" Kalluto said, looking around as Gon untied them from the dock and eyeing the tiny cabin situated in the middle of the boat.

"Occasionally," he shrugged.

He set them on a course due southwest and eventually Illumi sensed with confusion that they were heading more west than south. He stared out over the ocean, as the waves grew and buoyed the boat ever higher and farther out to sea.

"Where, exactly," he heard Kalluto say after two hours of this, "Are we going?"

"I'm not telling you, remember!" Gon said, shouting because the gentle breeze from Port Carucula had turned into huge gusts of wind.

"But we're going _nowhere_ ," Kalluto responded, "There's nothing _out_ there."

Illumi glanced over in time to see Hisoka stand up from the upturned crate he'd been sitting on and hook an arm around Kalluto's neck, dragging him away from where Gon stood at the helm.

He steered Kalluto over to where Illumi stood.

"Is this a joke?" Kalluto hissed, "He's taking this thing out to the middle of nowhere."

"Have some faith," Hisoka said, sounding amused, "This is Gon Freecss."

" _Exactly_ ," said Kalluto. His expression was pinched. If there was something he'd failed to master after all these years, it was his impatience.

Illumi felt a warm thrum in his chest, and for a brief moment, he considered giving into the urge pulling at the corner of his mouth. The feeling passed. The pull faded. He blinked.

"You might want to hold on to something," Gon said suddenly. He was staring out across the horizon at the dark clouds gathering ahead of them.

When Illumi looked over, he saw dark clouds gathering overhead in the direction they were headed, and the logical part of him shared Kalluto's doubts; could Gon's boat handle such a storm?

Illumi turned to meet Hisoka's eye and he felt that they shared the same thought at that moment. Skilled as they were at _nen,_ formidable as they might be in a fight, they were mortal. A storm this far out at sea was not something to take lightly.

They sat down, the three of them, and Illumi watched Gon at the helm, as the waves that pushed them on grew higher and higher. Gon's gaze remained unfalteringly ahead, his expression calm, the set of his shoulders relaxed.

Illumi's hair whipped in the wind until he warm rush of _shu_ swept his hair back in a quick braid and tied it at the end with a pink band.

Thunder clapped overhead and darkness rapidly descended on them. It began to rain in heavy sheets and the boat rocked. Under howling wind and crashing waves and rolling thunder and the bullet rain, Illumi expected to hear the ship creaking and groaning, but it wasn't there.

Gon steered them steadily on, and Illumi felt a twist in the pit of his stomach. It wasn't fear, though; he didn't feel that.

Illumi didn't mind the rain, either. He didn't mind being soaked to the core, and he knew how to ignore the cold when it wasn't life threatening. Yet, as they sat through the storm, it was near pitch black, and Illumi realized that the odd feeling in his stomach grew as he searched the skies for lightning.

 

#

When the storm ceased, it did so suddenly.

Gon was pushing them up a steep wave and it seemed once again that they surely shouldn't be able to make it over, and that surely the engine should have flooded by now. Suddenly a sharp crack of thunder exploded overhead and the boat began to tip in a downward slant, picking up seed, rushing down the back of the wave, through darkness and then—

As if emerging from a dark tunnel, the sky brightened all around them and the rain stopped.

The boat gave a final, hard push forward, buoyed forth, and abruptly they were on calm waters.

Illumi blinked and looked behind them.

The storm that they had just emerged from already seemed at least a mile off and was quickly moving away. The boat itself showed little signs of having just weathered an ocean tempests as well.

"Is everyone alright?" Gon called.

Illumi stood up and felt water rush down his clothes, dripping heavily to the ground. "Is this boat _nen_ -enforced or was that storm some sort of… conjuration?"

Gon turned to look back at them and grinned wolfishly. "Not telling. Anyway, we're almost there."

"Almost _where_?" Kalluto said, standing and peeling his yukata away from where it was sticking to his legs with a look of distaste. Using _ren_ , a burst of aura rushed up from within him and he was dry within seconds.

Illumi felt Hisoka do the same behind him, but rather than following suit, he looked out around the boat. For as far as he could see, there was only open ocean. The tempest was now a dark spot, miles away. How unnatural.

He hadn't used _gyo_ during the storm. It never occurred to him that Gon would have anything to do with _nen_ anymore, but now he wondered if the storm had purposefully distracted him from examining it closely, as well.

He thought about the lack of lightning and stared at the storm as it disappeared from sight.

They ought to have been a couple hundred miles west of land, but Illumi suspected that the storm was meant to obscure their location. When he turned to look at Gon, a thin line on the horizon ahead caught his eye. It appeared to be an island, of all things.

Illumi looked on with –quite unexpectedly –surprise.

As they drew closer, all but Gon were transfixed, observing the unfamiliar island.

It quickly grew apparent that the island was not only quite vast, but also mountainous. Gon steered them into a cove where the water was shallower and turned a pure, electric blue.

There was a short walk of a beach with white sands that quickly disappeared into a wall of thick-trunked trees. Those by the beach were short and curved, with large, fan-like leaves, but Illumi could see that farther inland, the trees that densely populated the tallest of three visible slopes were tall and cedar-like.

Illumi used _gyo_ on his eyes, scanning the land that he could see, and sensed absolutely nothing –not even a small animal. He frowned.

"Gon," Hisoka said as the boat came a stop, floating hundred or so feet off the shoreline, "what _is_ this place?" There was a small, thrilled edge to his voice. Clearly he had used _gyo_ to sense that there was something hidden within the island as well.

Gon anchored _Jajan_ in the water and walked over to join everyone looking at the island. "It's called Bertha."

Illumi gazed at Bertha. "What is it?"

Rather than answering, Gon dived off the edge of the boat, into the water. When he emerged, he waved at them, indicating they should follow and swim to shore, and disappeared under the water once more.

Illumi dove into the water.

He did not enjoy swimming, but there were many things he didn't enjoy, and he managed anyway. The water was warm, body temperature. As Illumi broke the water's surface, he could hear Hisoka and Kalluto splashing into the water as well, and all together, they quickly made their way for the shore. When they were nearly there, Illumi felt a sudden current tug through his hair and it came look from its braid, pink hair tie lost to the ocean.

He rose to wade the rest of the way to shore, using a burst of _ren_ to dry off his clothes and hair as he went.

Gon was already farther down the beach, near a spot where the treeline began. He was moving a boulder away from a tree trunk. After a moment of patting around on the sand, he pulled back a trap door and reached into a pit, pulling out an old green backpack.

Illumi watched from where he had silently approached and stopped, mere feet away. "Do you come to this place often?"

Gon slung the backpack over his shoulder and leveled Illumi with an inscrutable stare. "It's been a while." he said finally, turning to look up at the sky, where the afternoon sun was creeping closer and closer to setting. He looked past Illumi. "Come on," he said to Hisoka and Kalluto, "We should start moving before sun goes down."

They entered the forest in silence. Neither Illumi nor Kalluto chatted unnecessarily, and since Hisoka had opted to walk in line with Illumi instead of engaging Gon in small talk as Illumi had half-expected, there was nothing to fill the air except the sound of twigs crunching underfoot.

It seemed as though Gon was familiar with the terrain, even as they moved further into the dense overgrowth and the sky disappeared behind a canopy of wide leaves and unfamiliar species of flora. He trudged several paces ahead of them without a word.

Illumi considered their situation. Although there were many secrets about the world that he had come across in his years, he had never heard speak of any lore on a far west island by the name of Bertha. It hadn't escaped him that Gon had taken them straight west and through some type of conjured tempest to arrive, either.

There was the edge of the world, to consider, he supposed. Seven years earlier, Hisoka had spoken increasingly of joining the next expedition attempting to pass Lake Morbius to explore the Dark Continent.

Was it possible, Illumi thought, that they had sailed closer to the Ocean Border than he could have imagined? And if that was the case, how had Gon urged the _Jajan_ so close without getting them all killed?

No, they definitely had not passed the the Ocean Border.

The original question stood, then: where exactly were they? Was Bertha some sort of Greed Island-like phenomenon? Was this where Killua had been all these years, hidden so that Illumi had lost all trace of him over a decade earlier?

Illumi scanned the forest once again using _gyo_ , but even the ground lacked the thinnest film of an aura, something highly unusual, and in fact, statistically impossible. There was clearly life on the island, yet all aura was hidden, as if someone were using and advanced application of _zetsu_ and _shu_ to conceal the island's aura. That might explain why Bertha was unknown to Illumi, but then, who was hiding it?

The more Illumi considered Bertha, the more questions he had, and as his questions grew, it was becoming increasingly attractive to him to focus on building up his defenses a little more, strong as they were.

A sudden tremor that ran through the ground distracted him.

The group stopped and looked around, alert.

The earth shook again, this time with more intensity, and Illumi realized that it wasn't the shake of an earthquake, but of something far off ahead, rumbling and sending reverbs through the ground toward them.

A couple of paces ahead of them, Gon was paused, head tilted as though he were listening for something.

Illumi saw only the tree trunks that surrounded them, wide in circumference and padded with thick-looking, dark slabs of bark. The trees shot straight up into the thick of leaves and branches overhead, but as the earth shook again, it seemed as though the trees were growing taller... or the land was sinking.

"What was that?" Kalluto said, stalking over to Gon. He wobbled ever so slightly on his last step as the ground moved again. This time, the vibrations did not stop.

Gon turned back to them and nodded at the trees. "We should get to higher ground," he said, just as a huge gale of wind erupted through the forest, sweeping them back.

Illumi hardly had enough notice to pad his fall with _ken_. Jumping to his feet, he checked to see that Kalluto was doing the same and then he glanced over to see that Hisoka was already shooting up along the nearest tree, his palms sticking to the bark with Bungee Gum.

Illumi followed suit, drawing two of the thicker needles from the padded front of his jacket and using this to stab his way up the side of a nearby tree. He made quick work of scaling his way up to the first branch, about three hundred or so feet in the air. Stepping onto the branch, he looked down again.

Kalluto balanced on a thinner branch of a tree almost directly opposite Illumi, standing a couple feet lower with Gon.

 There was a soft  _swoosh_ of air behind him and he sensed Hisoka's aura shooting over.

"Fascinating island," he said, detaching Bungee Gum and landing gracefully on his feet beside Illumi.

Illumi said nothing.

"What was that wind?" he could hear Kalluto ask Gon below.

Gon peered down at the forest floor where they had been standing. "I guess it's worth mentioning that Bertha transmutes every once in a while. It looks like we arrived just in time for one of the terrain shifts."

So, Illumi concluded, Bertha—

"Bertha is a _creature_ ," Kalluto realized aloud. He couldn't hide the curiosity and surprise from coloring his tone.

"You could say that."

That could explain why Bertha couldn't be found on a map.

"Then we wait it out?" Kalluto said.

"Yeah," Gon replied, and with that, he sat down, letting his legs swing down in the air below. He was utterly unbothered, but Illumi could see the slight tick of impatience in Kalluto's expression.

Kalluto looked over, met his gaze, and they shared an impassive stare which seemed to express Kalluto's frustration and impatience, anyway.

"Shall we take a look from the top?" Hisoka spoke up.

Illumi glanced down, where the winds they faced previously continued to rush along the forest floor, moving at such a rate that small plants had been torn root-and-all right out of the ground. The natural debris and looser layers of earth were completely wiped from the area, leaving only the stubbornest of mossy growth clinging to the hard clay and stone that was left behind.

As Illumi watched, the ground began to blur, turning hazy, and even with his skilled eye, without being able to penetrate the transmutation in process with _gyo_ , he could make no conclusion as to what would happen next. He turned back to Hisoka and nodded, accepting his suggestion instead.

They moved swiftly to higher ground, breaking through a blanket of leaves fanning the forest ceiling.

Standing on the topmost branch, Illumi looked around and saw a sea of trembling treetops stretching in every direction as far as he could see. Beyond the treetops: dense fog.

"Hm," Hisoka said, peering about, "That wasn't very productive."

"I don't like this place," Illumi found himself saying.

"Really?"

"Of course, you find it fascinating. I don't like surprises. I don't like relying on Freecss."

"Oh, he's practically a fisherman these days."

Illumi watched the trees ahead of them, lower down, shake as the ground below shifted. "You tend to miscalculate when it comes to that boy," he said. " _Nen_ incapable or not…"

" _My_ ," Hisoka gasped mockingly, making Illumi turn to look at him. "Is this an irrational paranoia I'm sensing?"

Illumi blinked, unmoved. "Do you want me to push you out of this tree?" He said in lieu of a more direct response to Hisoka's teasing. Even so, he gave away his thoughts on the whole thing.

Hisoka flashed a smirk, his habit even after all this time for when he could get under Illumi's skin and provoke a response. "Would Gon bother bringing us all the way to this place if he wasn't taking you to Killua after all?" Hisoka reasoned.

Logically, Illumi immediately conceded that point. If Gon had other intentions, he surely would've put his plans into action earlier, rather than banking on a day that Illumi might come to him. Not to mention, from what Illumi gathered, Gon Freecss wasn't quite the scheming sort.

Even so.

"I don't find any comfort in the knowledge that _Bertha_ , island or creature, is not only a _nen_ genius, but a powerful one that I've never heard word of," Illumi said.

Hisoka merely hummed as he stared out into the fog.

Ahead of them, Illumi observed as a cluster of trees shivered and suddenly shot downwards, vanishing. The tree that he and Hisoka balanced atop of swayed from a the base, but did not seem in immediate danger of retracting into the ground.

Still, perhaps it would be better to keep an eye on Kalluto and Gon.

Illumi glanced over to the distance, where more treetops were being pulled down, and saw for the first time that rock pillars were replacing them.

He turned to Hisoka and shared the slightest of nods before stepping off the side of the thick branch on which they stood. He fell—

And fell;

Where there had been another branch a dozen or so feet below, there was abruptly nothing.

 _How troublesome_ , Illumi thought, reaching calmly to unsheath the climbing pins from his jacket. In a flash, he stabbed them sideways into the tree trunk, swinging to a stop before grabbing onto Hisoka, who dropped by him a millisecond later.

With flawless momentum they descended to where Hisoka had attached the end of his Bungee Gum farther down there tree.

They came to a halt, gripping a part of the trunk close to their original starting point.

Kalluto and Gon were not immediately visible, but Illumi sensed them in the area.

He took a quick look around to see how the terrain had shifted and found that the ground had risen up around the trees in a very uneven manner and was covered with thick moss from which tiny white and red flowers grew. A closer investigation of the terrain showed that the unevenness of the ground from from the transmutation of several large boulders. Glancing ahead, Illumi could see that the green of the moss began to fade in the distance, no doubt leading to the stone forest he saw shooting up from overhead.

Illumi turned his attention to ascertaining Kalluto and Gon's location, something that was easy to do when everything else around them lacked the slightest glow of an aura.

Kalluto and Gon had moved back to the ground and were moving away through the trees ahead at a leisurely pace.

As Illumi jumped down to the ground, he could focused in on them.

"...You know, you're not really what I expected…" he could hear Gon saying.

"Oh?" Kalluto responded without emotion. "You ventured to expect something from me?"

Illumi gave a slight push off the ground and, running, easily caught up to them.

Gon continued, unperturbed by the sudden presence of Illumi –and then also of Hisoka, who appeared on Gon's open side.

"Well, no," Gon shrugged. "You're a Zoldyck and one of the _Ryodan_ … although from what I remembered, you didn't use to _talk_ so much."

"You-!" Kalluto said, before biting back his words, regaining composure. He looked straight ahead, turning his nose up slightly.

The rumbling and shaking of the terrain shift began to subside.

Hisoka chuckled.

 

The moss grew sparse and the trees thinned out and soon they had arrived at the edge of the rock forest, which just so happened to be the edge of a cliff.

Illumi peered down over the ledge and saw only a deep drop, the bottom of which was obscured by a fog.

Ahead of them, tall, uneven rock pillars shot up from the crevasse and obscured the other side.

Everyone within the group turned to Gon for direction. Down or across some other way?

Gon was staring into the crevasse with a look of concentration. He glanced down along the edge of the cliff. "We're climbing down," he announced. "The cliff side is rough and uneven enough to maintain a grip on the rocks." He gave a nod toward the crevasse. "Careful."

"Of what?" Kalluto said, folding back his sleeves.

"Anything," Gon shrugged.

Illumi watched him peer over the ledge again, his expression curious—

At once, Illumi summoned several pins with _nen_ to hover over Gon's face.

To his credit, Gon did not stiffen as much as Illumi calculated, and he even turned his head slowly to look at Illumi. One of the pins dragged across his cheek as he did this, drawing blood.

Gon scowled. "What?"

"I assume that Bertha is a transmutator beast from beyond the Ocean Border. So how can you know what path to take?" Illumi tilted his head, examining Gon's expression and finding nothing but a stubborn determination. "Is Killua here?" He let the pins move in closer, creating six pinpricks along Gon's face. "Or are you wasting my time?"

A beat passed where Gon stared back at Illumi. The way he glared at Illumi had never changed –not from before Gon discovered _nen_ , not when he had it, and certainly not now, long after he had given it up. It was remarkable. Illumi could see why Hisoka had always been fond of Gon.

" _Tch_." he leaned back. His pins returned to his jacket.

"Truthfully, I don't know where Killua is at the moment," Gon said, unbothered as droplets of blood trickled down his face. "But," he added as Kalluto shifted, preparing a response, "There's something here that can help you find him, if he's gone. That's all I'm willing to tell you about that."

Illumi glanced sideways, sharing a look with Kalluto.

Gon had three or so inches on him, but that meant nothing when Illumi could use _ren_ , infusing his words with with a cold, deadly aura. He looked into Gon's eyes. "I tolerate your vague conditions because you have said that you will lead me to Killua," Illumi said. "Make no mistake: I will not hesitate to kill you. Bring us to Kalluto. Do this, and nothing else."

A light sheen of sweat formed at Gon's temples as he faced Illumi's _ren_ , which was turned down as to make a point without truly incapacitating Gon. "Understood," Gon gritted out.

Illumi retreated and Gon squared his shoulders. "Does anyone else want to get in another threat, or shall we continue?" he said, adjusting the straps of his backpack. He turned back toward the ledge. He looked into the deep and was still for a moment. "Then let's go," he said, and jumped down.

Illumi heard him land on a narrow ledge coming out of the cliffside quite a bit down and moved to begin his own descent. He felt Hisoka's aura move close with an edge of intention directed toward him and he turned his head automatically.

Hisoka was smirking.

It was a smirk that may have once been enigmatic, but years of experience told Illumi that Hisoka's amusement likely stemmed from Illumi's display of hostility against Gon, and the boy's characteristic, steadfast refusal to cower.

Illumi turned away and flipped his hair over his shoulder, tying it back. Then he glanced over the cliff edge once more, determining where to land, and drew his climbing pins out in anticipation.

He stepped off the cliffside and let gravity do its work.

When he registered the aura in the distance, it was unexpected. The presence itself was so strong and sudden, Illumi nearly lodged his pins into the rock past his intended mark.

Still holding onto the pins in the cliffside, Illumi turned as best he could and stared to look into the rock forest.

As soon as he had begun his fall, he could sense it;

There was something out there, something further down in the crevasse, and farther out ahead. It had an aura radiating clear as day, like a beacon of light surrounded by the darkness of an aura-hidden island.

Below, Gon continued a steady downward climb.

Kalluto slid gracefully down along the cliff side, passing Illumi, catching onto the uneven edges to direct and slow his fall as he went. Although he surely sensed the new aura, he didn't stop to dwell on it or its strength. He kept moving, and so Illumi did too.

Hisoka had leapt far ahead of them all, his Bungee Gum giving him an advantage to to descending the cliffside, and although Illumi was not so slow himself, when he glanced down, he could see that Hisoka had progressed to the point of the fog cover, and was disappearing from sight.

Illumi's focus was on the aura in the distance, calling to him with its intensity. It wasn't Killua, this was obvious after further reflection; Illumi would be able to recognize Killua's aura instantly, even after all the years that had passed since he last sensed it.

Yet, there was something familiar about the aura that drew Illumi to it, and he was –he was _curious_.

Illumi dropped through the fog cover, down, down—

The open air rushed by him but he didn't stop, letting himself pick up speed. He hurtled down past Kalluto, past Gon. The humidity of the fog cover stayed with the air even as it grew clearer, warmer…

Then Illumi saw green in his periphery and he flew down through the canopy of a rainforest, through leaves the size of sedans.

When the ground, thick with moss and low-growing plants, came into sight, Illumi dragged his pins through the rock to create a quick braking effect, slowly easing the amount of _shu_ he used on them until he was able to come to a full stop and hop down to the ground.

"Anxious?" Hisoka said, abruptly leaning into Illumi's space.

Sometimes Illumi wondered if Hisoka only crept up to him to see if Illumi might still reflexively try to injure him in some way, since it wasn't his habit to jump away.

Illumi turned. "You sense it, too." _What do you think it is_? He meant.

"Mm," Hisoka's eyes rolled up as he scanned their surroundings. "It's stationary, but either large or powerful. A _nen_ -made object, maybe. Or a sleeping creature." He looked over Illumi's shoulder to where Kalluto and Gon were likely near the bottom of the cliff. Looking back to Illumi, his lips curved into a gleeful smile. "I hope it's a _nen_ beast. There doesn't seem to be any other creature to fight here, and we can't very well fight _Bertha_."

"Well," Gon said, dropping onto the ground a few feet away and walking over. He clapped his hands together to dust them off and Illumi could see that his palms were scratched from the rocks. "You no doubt can sense where we're headed."

"What is it?" Kalluto said, joining them and smoothing out the front of his yukata.

"It's not far off." Gon replied, "We can run, if you'd like."

Illumi took off.

The rainforest floor was relatively easy to traverse. Darting between trees and and shrubs, over boulders, vines, and fallen hollows, Illumi raced toward the aura he could sense, giving no thought toward the rest of the group, although he could feel them in close pursuit. He pushed on, and as he grew nearer, he felt his heartbeat spike –not through exhaustion, no. Anticipation.

He broke into a clearing, free of the forest cover and abruptly stopped.

The base of a rock pillar lay in front of him, one side like a wall of stone, wider than he could have imagined, but it was not the pillar that stopped Illumi;

It was the house.

Sitting on the incline up to the pillar's base was a wood cabin, one door, one window, a smokestack chimney on one side. It looked… quaint. And it was enshrouded with an aura that all but pulsed with the strength of the _nen_ that had been used to build it.

Illumi felt Kalluto catch up to him, and moments later, Hisoka. Finally, Gon arrived.

"Ah," he said, "We're here."

"The aura of this house," Kalluto said slowly, "It's familiar."

"I guess it _would_ be," Gon said, starting forward toward the cabin, "I used to live here," he explained, "Killua and I –we built this place years ago."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's just them traveling through a buncha fucking trees, that's why. Also known as the "What the fuck's happening?" chapter.
> 
> Okay, thanks for bearing with me. More action to come, as well as some explanations.
> 
> My tumblr is freedomworm.tumblr.com if you want to drop me a line, or! You can just comment on this fic if you like it and want to see more :)
> 
> Thanks for reading!


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apologies for typos/errors. I have no beta and will probably not notice any major mistakes until much later. 
> 
> Comments are appreciated.

Inside, the cabin was empty –no, it was deserted. Abandoned.

Gon walk across the living room floor without a second thought, while Illumi and Kalluto and Hisoka, stood near the edges of the room.

It was… Illumi didn't know how to describe it. The main room held a table, chairs, a desk in one corner. There was something like a kitchen near the fireplace, with stone cutting boards and knives left behind, with mismatched cutlery and wooden bowls. Everything came in pairs.

Taking up another side of the main room was a flat bed with old woven blankets still left behind on it. Apart from these main sections of the cabin, it was crowded with boxes and chests, clearly holding miscellaneous artifacts. It was as though the cabin was a hideaway of sorts, a home to return to.

Everything was covered in a fine layer of grime.

Gon walked over to a stack of crates and storage tubes that were piled up in a corner near the desk that was pushed up against the wall opposite the foot of the bed. "This is it," he announced, picking up a tube container and twisting open the cap. He pulled out a roll of yellowing parchment, and it was clear that part of the strong aura the house gave off came from the collection of _nen_ artifacts stored within.

Illumi felt the urge to hesitate, but he shook it off. He strode across the room to examine what Gon had picked up.

"A map?" Kalluto said, he and Hisoka huddling around Gon for a closer look as well.

Gon nodded. "I said I didn't know where Killua might be if he wasn't still here, and that's true. We… haven't spoken in a while. But this map has _nen_ qualities. It –we picked it up in the Akonmar Jungle around some old explorer camps. Anyway, if you really want to find Killua, this is probably the only way how."

Illumi looked at the map, where the ink was faded some of the continents and their spatial relations were illustrated inaccurately.

"The Map of the Treasure Seeker," Gon explained, "Can point you in the direction of whatever it is you seek."

"And the price?" Hisoka spoke up.

"Your _nen_ will be sealed during the time you use the map." Gon admitted, "Until you find what you're looking for, you won't be able to use _nen_."

Illumi could feel the sense of reluctance that immediately developed among them. Even he was not exempt from this feeling; he did not like the idea of binding his _nen_ for an extended period of time, especially as he was still in an unfamiliar environment. Having become to accustomed to using _nen_ , Illumi imagined that to bind it would be a lot like cutting off an arm. Although he knew he could still make do without a limb, but it would be inconvenient –and depending on whether any enemies discovered this, severely so. Still, he would hardly be considered by many as 'vulnerable' without _nen_.

"Will there be any other consequences?" Illumi asked.

"Hm? No, that's the only condition."

"How accurate is it?"

"One-hundred percent," Gon said. He paused. "I know."

"Then I will be the one to use the map," Illumi decided. He felt all eyes turn to him, but he stared down at the map, resolute. Other than tracking down a _nen_ user or other _nen_ object with tracking abilities, it was their best bet to quickly finding Killua.

"Alright." Gon held out the map for Illumi to take.

The paper of the parchment felt surprisingly fibrous and undegraded, despite the map's worn appearance. He felt the aura of it flare under his touch, revealing for a moment a powerful _nen_ lurking within the map that he had not noticed before holding it.

 _What treasure do you seek_? the map's aura seemed to whisper to him.

He looked down, eyes roaming the dated country lines marked on the map's continents. _Killua Zoldyck_ , Illumi thought, _show me where he is_.

The map shook in his hands, _nen_ yanking it from his hands, and floating in the air before them, aura growing bright.

Illumi didn't look away, not even when he felt the map's _nen_ shoot forward, entering his eyes with a _whoosh_. He staggered back from the force and blinked in time to see the map flutter to the ground, lifeless.

Gon bent down to collect it.

Hisoka and Kalluto were watching Illumi expectantly, and although Illumi could sense a slight strain behind his eyes, his instinct to use _gyo_ could not be fulfilled; all sense of Kalluto or Hisoka or even Gon's faint aura had vanished. The world seemed emptier. Colder.

Illumi's _nen_ was gone.

He happened to catch the strange expression Hisoka was giving him, eyes darting up and down Illumi's body, eyebrows rising.

He supposed he must look strange with his _nen_ suppressed, aura nodes closed. Normal.

"Did it tell you something?" Kalluto asked.

Illumi blinked and looked around again, this time to see if anything else had changed. It was doing this that he saw a thin white line, as though made of aura, pointing through one of the walls of the house. "I can see the path I'm meant to take," he said, "I don't know where it leads."

"Here," Gon said, holding up the map in front of his face, "Can you see anything?"

Illumi turned his gaze to it, and discovered that the faded ink had been replaced, from his perspective, at least, by an accurate world map. There was a white dot in the sea, moving steadily toward the western edge of the Kakin Kingdom. Illumi tilted his head. He realized where the dot was headed, even without the benefit of city labels. "It looks as though Killua is traveling toward Shao Kong" he said.

"Shao Kong…" Kalluto echoed, thoughtful. "What would he be doing _there?"_

 _What indeed_ , Illumi thought. As a family, the Zoldycks rarely operated around Shao Kong, and because of this, Illumi had been to the seaside city only twice in his life.

Shao Kong was essentially its own city-state, ruled by organized crime. The bosses of the city dealt with their empires using their own rules regarding life, death, and money.

There were rumors of their deal with the Kakin government to operate all them to operate autonomously, and this understanding extended to outside assassin clans.

The bosses in Shao Kong differed from the common mafia in part because their families came from a long history of warriors, the higher-ups were _nen_ users, and whereas the mafia community valued dignity, the crime families of Shao Kong –immoral or amoral –valued integrity.

Although Illumi estimated that the crime bosses could ultimately be assassinated, their empire was vast, and the city was dependent on the ordered-chaos if its underworld, which prided itself in running smoothly and discreetly.

The fact Killua was in Shao Kong seemed an odd choice, but made sense, Illumi supposed. It was an urban area with the resources of such a location, yet somewhere Killua would not very likely encounter a family member.

"Don't look at me, I've never visited that place," Gon said, snapping Illumi from his thoughts.

"Is it possible Shao Kong isn't Killua's final destination?" Hisoka asked,

"Perhaps," said Illumi, "Although the city is surrounded by countryside. Regardless, we should head in that direction." He glanced at Gon, who drew himself up.

"I'm coming with you."

"Naturally," Illumi replied, "You know the way off this island." He paused a moment, "Why did you part ways with my brother?"

"What?" Gon said, startled.

Illumi waved a hand around the cabin. "You both lived here, presumably for some time, yet you didn't know where he was."

"Yes," Gon said slowly, "But if _I_ wanted to find Killua, I wouldn't need to come here and use a map."

" _What_?" Kalluto said, "Then why did you bring us here?"

"Because," Gon said, temper abruptly flaring, "You have a bad history with him. I wouldn't care if you just wanted to find him to say hi! I'm not making this _easy_ for you, and I'm not going to drag anyone else into this just to take a shortcut to finding Killua."

"Someone else," Illumi said, "You mean Alluka."

Gon leveled him with a glare.

Illumi shook his head. "Don't misunderstand. I'm not interested in finding Alluka at the moment. I only mean to follow Father's orders and attempt to bring Killua home to speak with our parents." He turned toward the door. "I understand your reasons, Gon." he said shortly, although he could sense that Kalluto was still irritated.

The exchange reminded Illumi more clearly of his job –and in a way, this _was_ just a job. And he was thinking too much. Reflecting. It wasn't relevant the reason Gon and Killua, who were once so connected at the hip, had voluntarily split off, or that Gon didn't generally know where Killua was. It didn't matter to Illumi's job what Gon's past with Killua was, since he was bringing them to Killua regardless, and _his_ only purpose seemed to be to keep a watchful eye on the three.

Illumi wouldn't dwell on what-ifs or bygones. He wouldn't dwell on Alluka, who he'd last glimpsed several years ago on that spring day, smiling under the sun.

He pushed those thoughts to the back of his mind and opened the cabin door.

Leaves spilled into the doorway.

"Oh," Gon said from over his shoulder, "Did Bertha shift again?"

"There weren't any tremors this time," Kalluto observed.

"They're just plants," Hisoka said. He ducked by Illumi, disappearing past the doorway, through the dense wall of leaves that had suddenly grown up around the cabin.

Illumi followed him. He couldn't feel Hisoka's aura, though he knew it was surely there. Instead, he tracked the sound of Hisoka's footsteps ahead of him, and the auburn hair and the silver-white of Hisoka's shirt slightly ahead of him, flashing in and out of sight as Hisoka forged ahead through the brush.

From what Illumi could discern, it seemed as though the terrain outside the cabin had remained the same; the only difference was the abundance of plant-life that had sprung up in the short time that they were inside.

Approximately one hundred feet from the cabin, Illumi ducked between two trees and joined Hisoka where the rainforest from before began and the area was comparatively more open.

"If I recall, Gon said that Bertha didn't transmute this often," Hisoka said,

"It was implied," Illumi agreed, looking back to the dense forest they emerged from.

Kalluto and Gon trampled through moments later.

"This island is spiteful." Kalluto said, cross as they continued back toward the cliff side as a group.

The ascent up the cliff took longer than the descent.

Without  _shu,_ using his climbing pins was not worth the effort, and strong and nimble as he was, Illumi still had to put forth significant effort to scale a cliff barehanded.

He moved along at around the same pace as Gon, while Hisoka jumped up ahead and Kalluto climbed –using, Illumi was fairly certain, despite being unable to confirm it – _shu_ in his heels to dig into the rock.

The mossy forest at the top of the looked unchanged and Gon led the group forward from there.

Illumi walked in silence.

Of course, there had been little in the way of conversation on the way over, but on the return trip, Illumi was… distracted, in a sense. His aura nodes had been open since he returned from Heaven's Arena at six years old, having reached the 200th floor, but unable to continue without knowledge of _nen_.

He'd returned home feeling disgraced, but Illumi could remember how thrilled Mother was, and how bemused that made him.

Zeno had taught Illumi about _nen_.

It'd been almost forty years since he couldn't access it.

He wasn't concerned –no, he'd known approximately what he was signing up for with locking up his _nen_ –but it was admittedly more disconcerting than he anticipated. The forest was empty before –now it was merely quiet.

 _So this is how it feels like for most of the world_ , he thought, looking around.

And perhaps it was due to his wandering thoughts or perhaps it was due to his lack of _nen_ (doubtful), but Illumi didn't notice the creeping vine that was looping around his ankle until he felt it tighten around his legs and yank him up into the air.

Out of the corner of his eye he belatedly noticed the shambling, dark green figure, emerging from the surrounding grounds.

There was nothing around him to stop his pull through open air, so Illumi pulled himself up to meet his feet, where a vine about an inch thick was wrapped tightly around his ankles. It was as he reached up, intending to rip himself free, that the vine released him.

Illumi fell through the air, and landed against a damp, soft but firm surface, higher up than he estimated the ground to be.

The sudden turn of events came about quick enough that it took slightly longer for Illumi to realize he'd landed in some sort of enclosure before everything grew dark and the walls closed around him.

The skin on his arms tingled in reaction to where they were exposed to the surface of whatever he was trapped in. Instinctively, Illum began to exert his strength to force open the acidic walls trapping him in when he heard a muffled, "Hisoka, _no_!"

From above there was a _swish_ and light poured in again. The top of Illumi's trap was sliced off.

An unseen force –Bungee Gum, he thought –pulled Illumi up and out. He landed on the ground in front of Hisoka, who looked him up and down quickly and critically. There was a hard glint in his eye that said he was not pleased with the unexpected turn of events.

Illumi blinked, and turned to look at his felled attacker, which appeared to have been a large plant-beast with vine-like appendages. Part of its head, which consisted primarily of one large mouth, had been cut off by Hisoka. It looked like it might have been a mutated Aries Fly Trap.

Abruptly, the wind picked up, going from a breeze to a strong gale in a matter of seconds.

"You shouldn't have done that," Gon told Hisoka, yelling to be heard over the wind.

"What, is the island _angry_?" Kalluto said, incredulous.

The ground began to tremble as if in affirmation, but this time, when it shook, Illumi could hear a distant screech, a roar that seemed to be coming from within the island itself.

"Yes," said Gon, " _Run_!"

They ran.

 

It wasn't that much farther to the beach, but the trouble was balance; moments after the ground began to tremble, it grew uneven underfoot. On his second stride forward, Illumi felt the earth turn to mush as he pushed off of it. His landed on soil that was also losing solidity, but he had just enough momentum left to force another leap off the ground and to the side, toward a tree. Here he took a moment to regain balance, grasping at the trunk, but even as he did that, he could feel the bark of the tree growing soft, as if it could sense him and was purposefully melting away.

Just as well.

Illumi shot away, and continued to make his way forward by darting from tree to ground, and back, never touching down for too long. The island seemed intent on dissolving away from them, or maybe stop them from leaving –Illumi wasn't sure.

Nearing the edge of the treeline –if it could still be called that with the way the trees seemed to be actively melting back into the ground –Illumi's foot sunk through the soil and stuck fast.

The surprise of it took the wind out of him and he crashed to the ground. Where his knees and hands hit the forest floor, he could feel himself start to sink down, like the shifting earth was loose sand.

Illumi yanked his hands free and struggled to make it up to his feet again. He could sense his weight was continuing to sink into the ground… although perhaps he was being _pulled_ in, as well.

"Illu?" Kalluto shouted, hesitating ahead.

"No," he said sharply, "Go." He yanked one foot free of the ground, then the other, and was satisfied to note that Kalluto had followed instruction and had vanished ahead. Illumi stepped out of his shoes to prevent reabsorption into the earth and kicked off again, pushing his pace to a speed he hadn't required use of for some time.

This effectively allowed him to race ahead, avoiding the trembling, shifting forest around him, and he burst through the eroding treeline and onto the beach a split second before a huge crash of rock joined the sound of far-off rumbling and a jolt through the sand succeeded in bumping Illumi to the ground.

He rolled with the fall, coming back to his feet and glancing back to see that much of the forest had collapsed into several sinkholes that had formed.

"COME ON," shouted Gon, the closest of the group to the _Jajan_ where it was anchored a little past the island shallows.

Illumi could see Hisoka and Kalluto were already in the water, speeding through the ocean toward the boat.

He dove into the water, quick to follow, and pushed through resisting waves toward the _Jajan_.

Hisoka reached over the side to pull him out of the water when he reached the boat's side. Illumi tumbled onto the deck just as the island emitted another high-pitched screech. The rumbling stopped. The ocean around the boat grew unusually still.

Gon froze for a moment, staring at the island. Then he lept into action, raising anchor, starting the motor.

It was as he began to maneuver them out toward the open ocean that there was a thunderous sound of rushing water –water, it became immediately apparent –that was falling away from one end of the island –from Bertha –as an enormous fluke of some kind began to surface.

Illumi stood watching as the _Jajan_ made its escape. He felt… awe.

Bertha's tail rose into the air, grotesque and monstrous, gray, rough and layered, scaly and spiked in some places, barnacled, plastered with spots of enormous parasites… It came to a near vertical position, towering approximately three hundred feet above them, thick as a skyscraper, big enough to blot out the sun.

And then it came down, falling swiftly, and distantly Illumi noted that the _Jajan_ picked up even more speed in response to Gon's urgency.

The lobtail landed with a thunderous _THRACK,_  sending a shock across the surface of the ocean that Illumi could feel even in the boat.

Displaced water rippled outward in response, pushing up into enormous waves even as the splash of the fluke sent a sheet of water soaring toward them on the boat, still valiantly attempting to make a safe distance away.

Enough time had been spent between their departure and the tail-raising and slapping from them to avoid completely being wiped out by the result tsunami wave, but the effects were still felt; the last Illumi glimpsed of the island was the disappearance of Bertha's tail back into the water just as the other end of the landmass began tipping into the ocean. The tail would have to rise again, but Illumi wouldn't see it.

As the wave from the first lobtail crashed down, it chased the _Jajan_ away, pick up in a steep wave that rapidly pushed the boat forth. Illumi was thrown off his feet as the boat lurched to the side and hurtled back, nearly capsizing.

It all took place at a rate that was alarmingly, deceptively quick. A wave, a push, a splash, and although Illumi soon realized he had been sent to the other side of the deck, against the side of the boat, one thing remained consistent in the chaotic effects of Bertha's dive; water, tremendous wind, and the feeling that at any moment the _Jajan_ would be torn apart.

It was, by Illumi's account, a more violent experience than the thunderstorm that they had weathered on the way _to_ the island.

When the last aftershock-of-sorts calmed and the _Jajan_ stuttered to a slow drift, Illumi slowly clambered to his feet, pulling himself up by the railing. He was slightly winded; the air had been forced from his lungs when he was sent flying across the deck and into the opposite walls.

The island was nowhere to be seen; all around them lay the open ocean, returning to calmness. Above them, the sun was beginning its mid-afternoon descent.

Illumi, dripping heavily with saltwater, squinted up at the sky. It was a clear, pale blue, cloudless.

It was the light blue color that soothed Illumi in a fundamental way, yet and –and perhaps this was a more recent development –filled him with a vague, tired sort of feeling. Ambiguous feelings were something that Illumi had had to grapple with as years passed, and although he accepted the grey areas that crowded his life, he still rather resented that emotions were not a thing that could truly be controlled.

Then again, the exhaustion that he could feel slowly eating at him could have had something to do with the rough sensation of wind-beaten rawness that layered his skin, which was completely unprotected against the elements without access to aura at Illumi's disposal.

He blinked, throwing off any thoughts of weariness, emptying his mind, freeing himself from his attachments. Lingering experiences, like ambiguous emotions, were frustratingly and, perhaps, increasingly frequent. (Or, Illumi recognized, perhaps they weren't increasing, but had always been present. He resented any and all delusions from his youth).

"How do you offend an _island_ , Hisoka?" said Kalluto, drawing Illumi's attention.

Hisoka responded with a broad smirk, a reflex, but as his gaze slid to the side, meeting Illumi's, his expression tightened.

Illumi looked away, scanning their surroundings for an indication for direction.

"That way," he told Gon, who was grappling with a compass and a laminated chart at the helm.

He ignored the bursts of aura from Kalluto and Hisoka that he couldn't sense except as rushes of air as they dried off. Instead, he moved across the deck to the far end of the _Jajan_. Ahead of them lay a white line, stretching through the air over miles and miles of ocean, visible only to Illumi's eyes.

Gon directed them in the way Illumi had pointed.

The path to Killua was found, but, Illumi sensed with dissatisfaction, the journey was far from over.

Shao Kong lay ahead of them, and with it, the insidious whisper of uncertainty.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apologies for the delay and the potential typos!
> 
> Heads up in this chapter:
> 
> -Minor animal cruelty (bird)  
> -gore (kind of)

In hindsight, all of Illumi's training before he learned  _nen_  seemed like child's play. The inclusion of  _nen_  into Illumi's training changed things considerably. It was… foreign.

Of course, his progression with  _nen_  was steady, advancing at a rate perfectly respectable according to the Zoldyck standard. Even so, a year in, he had not cemented his  _zetsu_  abilities. There were some techniques he had attempted, according to suggestions from Zeno, Mother,and Father, but none of them felt right. Illumi had yet to develop an original manipulation ability. This was not, Zeno assured, completely unusual, given that Illumi was but a boy, seven years old.

When he said it that way, Illumi felt a hot prickle in his chest, and he found that he preferred to avoid his grandfather when they were not training.

Rest periods in the day were in the evenings, before dinner.

Illumi sat on the wall of a patio deck outside one corner of the house, facing the forest beyond. This was where he found himself frequently these days, away from the endless, empty halls of the house, but still within reach.

Mother wished he would spend more of his free time with Milluki, but Illumi didn't much care for toddlers. He had made a small doll for Milluki to stab pins into, and that small gift felt like enough affection owed to his brother for the time being.

Milluki was tolerable enough, considering he couldn't communicate effectively, so perhaps, Illumi thought, he simply didn't care for siblings. Were that true, Illumi was in for an unfortunate time, as he expected he would have another sibling after Milluki. Sometimes, Father looked at the both of them with dissatisfied eyes, as though they had arrived into the world lacking something, to no fault of their own.

It was late summer, and change was in the air. Soon, the outside world would begin to wither.

A bird flitted over, flashing in Illumi's periphery, landing on the wall nearby. It hopped nearer, curious.

Illumi watched the creature, allowing it to come closer.

It was some sort of blackbird, small and rounder than the crows that Illumi more often saw around the grounds. It must've flown over the gates alone. Foolish.

 _Didn't anyone tell you not to come here?_  Illumi thought, reaching out. His movement was so controlled, so smooth, the blackbird did not realize it was being captured until Illumi's hands were already closed around its small body.

The blackbird squirmed, startled, but Illumi kept it firmly cupped in his hands and looked down at it. After a moment, the sparrow abruptly stopped, pecked twice at Illumi's hand and squawked. Illumi squeezed, feeling the heat of the bird's form, its tiny heartbeat.

He threw it in the air before him and the bird spread its wings, catching itself, flying free.

To Illumi's bemusement, the blackbird flew back to the wall, hopping over onto his knee.

Animals typically avoided Illumi. He was only seven, but he knew this already. The mammals in the estate avoided the family, hid away. Never had any creature approached him voluntarily.

"Fly away," Illumi told the blackbird, "Don't stay here." He waved a hand at it, this time making his movements obvious, and the blackbird seemed to peer at him for a moment before spreading its wings and taking off. He watched the blackbird soar away, and felt something ugly and cold bloom in his chest.

"A brave creature, don't you think?" said Zeno, behind Illumi.

He didn't startle, but he cursed inside. It wasn't that he hadn't noticed Zeno –if his grandfather didn't want to be noticed by Illumi, he wouldn't be –but Illumi hadn't been anticipating a change in his surroundings, either.

"Stupid," Illumi said. He stared up at the sky, clear now. The blackbird was long gone. "I should have killed it."

Zeno stepped around to stand on Illumi's left, behind the patio wall. "Why is that, Illumi?" he asked.

Illumi was puzzled. "We are Zoldycks." he said eventually, looking over at Zeno. "We kill."

"We do a job," Zeno corrected. "Did you want to kill the blackbird, boy?"

"No."

"Then there is no 'should'. Have intention, Illumi, and do not dwell on past things."

Illumi nodded.

"Come inside now. Supper. Then we train." Zeno was already walking away.

Illumi climbed down from the wall and followed Zeno back inside.

 

Two days later, a butler came to Illumi's room with a large silver cage, which was set on a table by Illumi's window.

Inside the cage was a beautiful raven with plumage so sleek and black it gleamed purple and blue. Illumi stared at the raven without a word and it peered back at him shrewdly. Father did not bestow gifts without reason, and neither of his parents would give him such a useless pet that he might form attachments to.

Illumi did not want to the raven, but he did not want to tell his grandfather that, either.

He didn't want this pet, or any pet, but he would keep it alive, because it was in his care.

Zeno made no mention of the raven during Illumi's training, and afterwards, he was too winded from exerting his aura to hint at it, anyway. After supper, Illumi ventured to the mansion library, a place he usually only ventured into for his morning studies, and read up on birds of prey.

He fed the raven pieces of meat and wondered if it felt lonely. The raven stretched its wings. The cage was big but nowhere near big enough.

The following day, Illumi took the cage to a big empty ballroom, a part of the manor that he could not recall ever being used. There, he let the raven out. It hopped from the cage, paused a moment, then soared up, circling the ceiling of the room before landing on a ledge that ran around the room.

Illumi sat down on the ground by the now empty cage and let the raven fly as it pleased for several minutes. The minutes slipped into an hour, an hour into two.

As he watched the raven fly, the coldness in his chest spread.

The bird squawked, feeling Illumi's aura oozing out to encompass it, and it flew straight to Illumi, squawking, struggling against itself.

 _Shush_ , Illumi thought, and the raven fell silent, its body frozen as Illumi reached out to pick it up.

When Zeno entered the room, he found Illumi sitting on the ballroom floor, a grotesquely half-manipulated bird-type creature in his hands. The bird's body trembled, fighting against the transformation Illumi was attempted to place upon its appearance.

"It won't hold." Illumi said simply, not looking up even as he sense his grandfather approach.

Zeno said nothing, observing.

Illumi pressed his  _nen_  against the raven once again, shrinking its body. For a moment, he held a small blackbird in between his hands. Then it began to tremble, the manipulation quickly wearing off.

"Hm," said Zeno, "You will need to train more to increase the strength of this ability. You'll need something to keep your manipulations in place." He walked away, but there had been the barest hints of satisfaction in his tone.

Illumi latched onto it, puzzled, and then looked at the raven again, catatonic under the pressure of his  _nen_. It was nearly all the way un-transfigured. He frowned, abruptly certain that he did not want the raven to turn back. Twisting the bird's delicate body, Illumi cast it into the air. It fell with a dull  _thump_  to the floor, lifeless.

He turned his back on the bird and the empty cage and the ballroom, and stood, retreating, back to training, putting thoughts of birds from his mind.

 

#

There were many things that Illumi could not sense without his aura, and if he'd held any hope that  _nen_ -locked vision would show him something of the world that he had forgotten with  _nen_ -sensitive sight, he would have found himself sorely mistaken. There wasn't, of course, anything unique to his new worldview, in fact, it was deeply limited.

"We're making land at Botson Harbor," said Gon, "We can book an airship to Kakin Kingdom from there."

"Our Hunter Licenses will work as visas," Kalluto remarked, "But is it wise to fly direct to Shao Kong?"

"Even if we don't fly direct, the main roads into Shao Kong are all patrolled," Hisoka spoke up. "It makes no difference how we arrive."

"You know the city, then?" Kalluto asked.

Hisoka shrugged. "All that matters is we follow the path set out according to the map." He glanced at Illumi.

"We'll arrive by airship," Illumi agreed, "Right now, there's no reason to believe the crime bosses have involvement in why Killua is in Shao Kong, but if we arrive discreetly and are discovered later, our secrecy will be taken as a sign of aggression."

Kalluto nodded. "Then I'll make arrangements when we go ashore."

The  _Jajan_  reached the dock smoothly minutes later, and as Gon made arrangements for his boat, Illumi, Hisoka, and Kalluto headed inland.

Botson Harbor was a busy port, more so than others, since its metropolitan area closely bordered the coastline.

Kalluto was preoccupied with his tablet as they waited for Gon, leaving Illumi and Hisoka to their own devices.

Illumi stood rigid and unnoticed by a majority of passerbys despite his locked  _nen._ It was his skill as an assassin that made him capable of remaining largely obscure in a crowd;  _zetsu_  was not the only method that rendered one invisible to the undiscerning eye, after all.

The white line was still very much glowing before Illumi, stretching thin, beckoning him down the bustling streets. It disappeared through a large brick building up the road.

"What do you see?" Hisoka said by his side. He was gazing in the same direction, scrutinizing in a way that made Illumi wonder if Hisoka was straining to find a hint of the  _nen_  line that was burnt into his own vision.

A couple feet away, Kalluto glanced up from his tablet, the flurry of his touches against the screen slowing.

"The line." Illumi said simply.

Kalluto looked down again, thinking that was it.

Illumi gazed about him. He saw people, indistinct from each other in the way they milled around, going about their daily business. Usually, Illumi did not deign to do more than register the images around him for security reasons. He would periodically and methodically sort through nearby auras for threats and and blank spots that signified hidden  _nen_  users.

Now, he registered passing faces to his memory, and was forced to see them without even a muted aura signature. Idly, he discovered that the peculiarities about certain individuals seemed more of note now that there was nothing else to see about them.

Hisoka stood four inches to the left of Illumi and looked at him for ten seconds at a time, blinking once during that time, the again at the end before doing a visual sweep of the area within his line of sight. After twenty seconds, he would look at Illumi again, not quite staring, but watching with steady eyes,

Illumi frowned the next time Hisoka's amber eyes came around. He wasn't helpless, he communicated, narrowing his eyes ever so slightly.

Hisoka abruptly smirked.  _Message received._  He continued watching, however.

"So, if you two are finished here…" said Gon, coming to a stop next to Kalluto and looking between them.

"I've got the flights sorted out," Kalluto announced. "There's an airship leaving in two hours."

Illumi blinked.  _Clear your mind_ , he thought. He slipped into precision mode, filtering out irrelevant information as he scanned his surroundings, ignoring the peculiarities, dwelling on nothing. This would have to be his method of operation until they found Killua and he regained his  _nen_.

They had a mission to complete; Illumi had a brother to find.

 

#

_I've gone soft._

Illumi stared out the airship window where they sat in a private section. There wasn't much to see except for clouds, but still Illumi stared. The white  _nen_  line ran parallel to their airship as he looked down, but when he looked up again, he could see the line straight ahead of him, disappearing into the wall of the room.

It was distracting.  _He_  was distracted.  _I meant to clear my mind_.

But there he was anyway, thinking.

Illumi rose out of his seat, a movement which drew the attention of Hisoka. Kalluto remained immersed in whatever he was doing on his tablet and Gon sat in the corner of their room, head tilt back, apparently sleeping.

They had booked passage on an airship cruise model. Treading quietly through the corridor of the first class deck, Illumi heard the door to the room he'd just left slide open.

He walked to the end of the deck, past the semi-crowded bar and lounge, all the way back to the back of the ship to an empty sitting area there.

As he stared out through the tall window, before him, glad that the white  _nen_  line wasn't in his line of sight for once,Hisoka dropped into the armchair next to him.

"Have you tried meditating?" said Hisoka, because it amused him.

"Hovering is not an attractive look for you."

"Am I hovering?"

"You're…" Illumi bit back a swell of bitterness that threatened to seep out of him. Cattiness was not attractive, either.

Relative silence filled the air instead. The dull roar of the airship moving through the sky stretched between them.

"I'm not a fragile thing, Hisoka." Illumi said eventually, despising every moment of it. It sounded weak to say aloud.

"I'm aware," Hisoka said airily.

Illumi looked at him, feeling his eyes narrow, but looking at Hisoka was a reminder of his current handicap. He couldn't sense any part of Hisoka's aura, which was normally pulled right anyway, but not so close that his power wasn't abundantly clear to anyone who looked.

Illumi shifted in his seat and turned his head away, but when Hisoka reached out a moment later, he still caught Hisoka's wrist and frowned.

Hisoka raised an eyebrow. His lips twitched.  _Tetchy_. He leaned across the space between them, ignoring Illumi's death grip. "Don't forget," he said quietly. "I died once without ever expecting it."

Yes, he remembered. His mind recoiled at the thought even if he made no outward movements. There had been been blood, it seemed, everywhere. Blood soaking the bed, hemorrhaging from Hisoka's grey face.

" _Nen_  isn't everything." Hisoka said with a wry expression.

Illumi dropped Hisoka's arm, allowing a rare, short laugh to escape, and afterward they sat there for a while longer, watching the clouds below. Illumi thought of nothing at all.

 

#

_Seven Years Earlier._

 

It was an overcast day and the sky was still rumbling thunder outside. It had stormed and thundered throughout the night as well, but Illumi awoke like clockwork at five o'clock that morning all the same.

It was a toss up, lately, on whether or not Hisoka would join him for his morning training routine. Illumi had been keeping track mentally, and in the past six months, Hisoka's sleeping pattern had shifted. Illumi wasn't completely certain if it had to do with Hisoka adjusting his aura away from a bloodlust-fueled state, but that the was the most reasonable explanation. Nearly two years ago, Illumi convinced him to trade away the raw, unhinged power of a malice-driven aura for something more controllable. The training had taken months

Illumi couldn't recall if he'd experienced similar changes when he cleansed his aura. Cleansed was a strong word, anyhow. It was much more like bleaching, like a powerful detoxing. It left one feeling raw and bitter about it, resentful of the loss of the palpable loss in unrestrained power, pulsing just within reach.

For the first week, Hisoka had woken up promptly and they'd sparred in the penthouse gym for most of the morning, and each day it seemed like he might go back to his old ways, and Illumi wondered whether he would have, if he'd been sparring with someone else.

"If you don't go through with this," Illumi hissed after the tenth day, when Hisoka's face had started to grow dark and his aura thrummed vindictively, "You will never be in complete control. You will be a slave to your own bloodlust. Your power will never be able to grow." He had Hisoka pinned to one of the walls by the neck.

They were both breathing hard and Hisoka was looking at Illumi with baleful eyes, but he hadn't moved, which meant he was actually listening.

Illumi let go and moved backwards toward the center circle of the gym. "Again," he said, beckoning.

Hisoka came over to him slowly, and stopped much closer than he would if he intended to spar. He was looking at Illumi with a pensive expression in eyes, the corners of his mouth turned down ever so slightly as he contemplated something.

Illumi waited, reading Hisoka just as he was being read, watching the edges of Hisoka's aura. It was still dark and rough, because that was its nature, but where there was once an undercurrent of something rotten and burnt, there was quickly becoming a silken emptiness.

When Hisoka reached out, hand catching the back of Illumi's neck, Illumi leaned in willingingly and met Hisoka's lips with his own. Hisoka kissed him softly and let him go, which was unexpected enough that Illumi stood there for a moment, blinking.

Hisoka stepped back, into a ready stance, and so Illumi put aside the moment for later contemplation.  _Here we go_ , he thought, and they threw themselves into combat once more.

 

So that was how it was at first, and after the first six months, Hisoka finally seemed to unwind again, and he fought again because he liked to and not because he needed to or he'd lose his head. He kissed Illumi roughly and in many ways seemed reckless again, except that it was just a front. Hisoka was hardly without caution. His aura was no longer a burdensome thing to pay dues of blood to, and it made a difference, though Hisoka surely knew more of what that was than Illumi.

Occasionally, Illumi wondered what drove Hisoka now, if it wasn't aggression. He had said that the choice must be Hisoka's, that he had to pick something new to base his aura around. Illumi himself had picked something steadfast: his ironic determination as a Manipulator to never be controlled by anyone or anything that he did not want, deep in his black, twisted soul.

He had never asked Hisoka what he had chosen, but it seemed that after the first six months, Hisoka had changed his choice. Of course, he never said as much, but his aura all but snapped into a new, energized form, so Illumi could tell.

Lately, Hisoka talked about possibly going to the Dark Continent. It was the only challenge in the world, it seemed, that would be so terribly difficult from the very start.

Illumi went about his morning that day with vague thoughts about a potential expedition. On a personal level, he had no reason to travel out to that unchartered territory… he had assassinations to carry out and that was really his only purpose in life, as a Zoldyck.

He went into the kitchen, taking a small breakfast and tea. Hisoka would most likely come down to the penthouse gym at six o'clock, just in time to spar. Illumi watched the early morning news on mute as he finished up his tea before going down to the penthouse first level and changing into suitable exercise clothes. The morning passed as per usual. Stretching. Warm-up circuit. Calisthenics. Forms. Stretching. Six-forty. Seven.

Sweat trickled down the side of Illumi's cheek. He looked to the doorway and frowned.

 

The living quarters were quiet as Illumi emerged from the stairs and he walked through the kitchen, wondering casually whether training Hisoka out of the aura imbalance that caused his bloodlust had resulted in hypersomnia, or whether that was a natural habit that was coming back in full force.

Illumi rounded a corner and his amusement vanished in an instant.

He could feel Hisoka's aura pulsing tumultuously from the next room, and it made Illumi raise and reinforce his  _ken_  shields on instinct.

A cold feeling seeped into his skin that had nothing to do with Hisoka's aura. The feeling stabbed at Illumi and dropped sharply from his chest and into the pit of the stomach, twisting his insides.

When he pushed through Hisoka's aura and entered the bedroom, it felt like all he saw was red. He forced his vision to adjust.  _Focus_. He kept his heartbeat in check and breathed in deeply, inhaling the sharp metallic tang of blood and the bitterness of something else, something Illumi couldn't place right away.

In the middle of it all was Hisoka, writhing in the bed, arms outstretched, clawing at the sheets. He was suffering a seizure of unknown origins, and it took an immense effort for Illumi just to fight his way across the room.

Hisoka's  _nen_  had taken on an uncontrolled, offensive quality and the pressure of his aura was intense. By the time Illumi got to the bed where Hisoka was convulsing, he was crawling and Hisoka's eyes were rolled back in his head. Vessels had burst across the whites and Hisoka's skin was clammy and ashen where Illumi grabbed his arm.

The contact had a grounding effect. Hisoka's aura rushed back toward him like Bungee Gum and he arched away from the mattress with a violent shudder. For a moment, everything seemed to be over, and then the rigidity seeped out of Hisoka's half-suspended body and he choked as blood poured into his mouth.

Illumi stared at Hisoka, who had been fine just hours earlier, who had been sleeping regularly. Confusion and something deeper and fearful swept through him in a flash, and then he did what he had been taught from a young age, and Illumi stuffed all of the hots and colds raging through his mind into the vacuum at the back of his head, forcefully compartmentalizing everything. He waited for the split-second it took for his world to turn dull and muted and then he went to work.

The first order of business was pushing Hisoka on his side and holding him down like that with  _nen_  while Illumi ran through the apartment. It felt like he slipped in and out of the medical supply room in a dream-state, rifling through the medication cabinet, grabbing an auto-pen.

Illumi returned, this time with less trouble as Hisoka's aura was relatively in check again. He climbed onto the bed, sweat still seeped into his clothes, now joined by the slippery-stickiness of blood. With steady hands, Illumi ripped off the sterile packaging, readied the pen and pushed the shot into Hisoka's thigh.

Then he waited, counting, and even though blood continued to trickle out of Hisoka's nose and out of the corners of his mouth, the seizure grew weak. Illumi held Hisoka's wrist, feeling for his heartrate and finding that it was weak. He used  _gyo_  to get a better look at his aura, and it was then that he noticed it: that twisting, bloody aura hidden in Hisoka's chest.

That was the bitterness, Illumi realized – _that_  was what he had sensed earlier, coming out with all the blood. There was something poisoning Hisoka from within, something that had managed to go undetected by them both.

Everything felt very still and time slowed. Illumi could hear his heart thudding, louder than anything, it seemed. Questions plagued him.  _When_?  _How_?

Hisoka's was half-dead before Illumi, drenched in his own blood and sweat, eyes barely open and unseeing. His face was gray and lifeless, and a voice whispered in Illumi's head that it would be more merciful to twist Hisoka's neck and be done with him quickly.

The foreign aura moved around inside of Hisoka, the parasite nestled inside beginning to sense the effects of the tranquilizer coursing through Hisoka's bloodstream.

_Tlock… tlock…_

Blood dripped off the edge of a soaked bedsheet, onto the carpet.

Illumi touched a hand to Hisoka's cheek, deciding he wouldn't be that merciful. Time resumed.

Illumi returned to the supply room with renewed efficiency. The blood bank in the corner of the room hummed. He grabbed an instrument tray, the I.V hook stand from the corner. If Hisoka was going to die, he'd better wake up and get Illumi's permission first. He'd have to scream for it.

They'd known each other twenty-four years now. Illumi wasn't done with him yet.

 

 

The parasite was weakened by the drugs, but it still put up a fight, squirming weakly toward Hisoka's abdomen in an attempt to hide.

Illumi cut through Hisoka carefully, encased his hand in  _shu,_  and pulled the blasted thing out in two parts, plonking them both into a jar. It had tendrils, tendrils that tried to squirm away when the main body of the creature was extracted, but Illumi had his own ways and he reached out with his  _nen_  and whispered for the roots of the parasite to come out, to come to him.

As the tendrils came out, there was a horrible moment when Hisoka's heart stopped beating, and everything went dead silent. A chill ran down Illumi's spine, but he reacted almost without thought, enshrouding Hisoka's chest in  _nen_ and rather crudely sending countershocks to Hisoka's heart using his aura.

The kick made Hisoka inhale sharply, but he did not regain consciousness. His heart thumped back to life, and Illumi let out a slow breath before forcing his mask of composure to fall down again, keeping him on top, in line.

He discarded all the bits and pieces of the parasite into the jar and didn't give it a second look, not when he was up to his elbows in blood, not when there had already been such a close call. He was going to need to give Hisoka more blood soon, the loss had been so great. Illumi had never been more than passably good at mending complex wounds, but he didn't think about that as he sewed Hisoka back up, dressed up the wounds, and washed the blood off his skin.

He stuck Hisoka all full of needles and tubes afterwards, intent on pumping all the necessary blood and antibiotics into him. They didn't have a respirator or a heart monitor in the penthouse, but Hisoka was still hanging on somehow, when a normal person would've been long dead -or at least, would've stayed dead.

Illumi stood up when it was all said and done and Hisoka was relatively stable.

There was blood all down his front and on his arms, sort of sticky and tight as it dried over his skin. Some of it flaked off as he pulled the bed sheets off the bed from underneath Hisoka.

The mattress was still soaked through. It would turn brown, and Illumi would have to move Hisoka to a cleaner bed, throw out the mattress. Maybe change the carpet if it couldn't be saved. Not yet, though.

He gingerly laid out fresh sheets beneath Hisoka, obscuring the stained mattress, and pulled a clean robe over him to replace the pajamas he'd been cut out of. Afterward, Illumi stuffed the blood-stained sheets into trash bags, tidied up the room, washed the scissors and scalpels he'd used, and dumped them into the ultrasonic cleaner.

It was nearly ten o'clock when Illumi blinked and felt the thundering silence around him fall away. Abruptly, the apartment seemed to come back into focus and Illumi was standing in the middle of the hall between the bedroom and kitchen, hands washed but clothes still caked in blood.

A dull ache was forming behind his eyes, and though logistically speaking, Illumi could still function proficiently for thirty-five more hours without rest, he sensed something hollow growing in him, making his throat clench just a little before he forced his body to regain composure, to bend to his will.

The jar with the parasite was still in the bedroom, on the nightstand by the bed as Illumi crept into the room to examine the creature in the light.

It was definitely a parasite, a four inch, yellowish-gray arthropod with four long, black tendrils at either end. It was in about six pieces now, but still writhed weakly inside of the jar, dying, it seemed, without a warm host.

Illumi only recognized the thing from books. It was the black-tailed nematode, a black market parasite, and apparently it had incubated long enough to hatch and begin wreaking havoc. Had Illumi arrived later, Hisoka would be dead.

As Illumi stared at the dying creature, his eyes narrowed. The rage that burst to life in his chest could not be mistaken.

He set the jar down while every fiber of his being screamed for him to throw it against the wall, and glanced down at Hisoka's face, at his eyes closed in sleep, no longer rolled back.

Illumi's lip curled. He went into the next room and picked up the phone, spoke to his brother in cold, clipped tones, explaining everything he knew, anything that could be relevant.

" _Find out_ ," he hissed into the phone, and Milluki heard the cold fury in his voice and hung up with a  _yes, brother._

Later, Illumi stood in the kitchen alone. He made lunch, forced it down robotically, tasting none of it.

He fumed, and allowed the anger to smolder within him, and sharpen his thoughts, but not to consume him. Never that.

With his field of  _en_  extended over the bedroom in case complications arose, Illumi finally went to the bathroom and stripped out of his grimy clothes, now stiff with dried blood and sweat.

He washed up, staring apathetically at the shower wall. The hot water ran down his body and seemed to take his anger with it.

When he stepped out, he felt curiously drained. It was still early afternoon as Illumi toweled off, pulled on fresh clothes and went back into the bedroom.

The sight that greeted him was still partially a mess, still half-seeped in old blood.

The black-tailed nematode appeared despondent in its jar. Illumi looked at it for a moment and moved it to another corner of the room, and though he normally meditated sitting up, that hollow feeling from before seemed to have spread through him, replacing every part of him that previously burned to go out at once and  _kill_   _kill kill_.

Illumi sat down on his side of the bed, watching Hisoka's bandaged chest rise and fall with each shallow breath, monitoring the way his aura bristled and spiked, frantically healing a body poisoned from the inside out.

 

It would be two days before Milluki called back and said in plain terms that the black-tailed nematode couldn't be traced past the Xiatu Underground Auction, and had Illumi considered whether the parasite had been meant for Illumi?

The nematode, Milluki would tell him, had an incubation period of six months, where it grew and remained unnoticed and after that, it awoke and crawled through the body sucking up  _nen_  and eating at the flesh. But, Milluki would say, if Illumi still kept up his poison immunization regime, it was possible that he'd poisoned any incubating nematode, and had flushed it out.

It would be three days before Hisoka's eyes finally fluttered open, and he would say nothing for a long moment, not until after Illumi found himself reach out and touch a hand to Hisoka's cheek.

"Who did this?" Hisoka would rasp, because he hated to be fragile, hated it just as much as Illumi did.

"We'll find out. We'll look." Illumi would reply, but they wouldn't find anything, even after all the throats they cut to do so. They would search, and discover nothing but fake names and dead ends and when the next expedition set out for the Dark Continent, Hisoka would say nothing, because apparently all it took to send him to death's door was a damned bug, and it made him seethe.

All this would happen as time unfolded, however.

 

In the present moment, Illumi stretched back on his side of the bed, mindful not to jostle Hisoka. He stared up at the ceiling, usually white but bluish-grey in the dimly lit room, and reached out with one hand, laying his fingers over Hisoka's wrist where he could feel his pulse, faint but steady.

Part of Illumi –the part of him that always seemed to cause him trouble, the part of him that he'd successfully ignored for the majority of his youth – _that_ part of him whispered for him to turn on his side, to watch Hisoka and be certain with his own eyes that life persisted in the man he had saved.

Illumi ignored that nagging thought and continued to gaze upward, attempting to enter a meditative state. He willed his mind to clear, his thoughts to quiet, but even then, it seemed a white noise buzzed around in his head.

He thought of nothing, but it was not enough. The hollow feeling grew within him, gnawing at him, and try as he might, for once, Illumi could not push it away.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1.) There's quite a bit of headcanons at work in this chapter that I wanted to note: first, according to my research on nen manipulators, the medium that manipulators use must be something that has been in their possession for some time (which they are familiar with), so now I have this headcanon that Illumi was always sort of handy with a needle. It feels like something that could potentially be true, considering Kikyo’s obsession with making Kalluto doll-like as a child. I feel like when Illumi was younger, she might have taught him how to do things like sewing, and so near the beginning of this chapter, I added that bit about how Illumi made a kind of pin-cushion doll for Milluki. a.) because pin cushion dolls are the appropriate combination of cute and morbid and b.) I’m 100% sure Milluki would be a violent stabby-stabby toddler.
> 
> 2.) Also: I think Zeno probably raised Illumi more than Silva, who obviously has that white-haired-heir favoritism thing going on.  
> Nen is based on emotional states, a malice/aggression-based aura results in the bloodlust state that Hisoka and Illumi exhibit in HxH canon. In this series, I’ve written Illumi in such a way where it seems likely that he would have, at some point, reformed the way he channels his aura. By this, I mean that in this series, Illumi would've gotten rid of the bloodlust side effect in order to gain greater control of his nen. As referenced in this chapter, he convinces Hisoka to do the same when they are 35/39 years old. When Hisoka is infected with the nematode, they are 37/41. As a reminder, the bulk of this fic takes place when they are 44/48.
> 
> 3.) The black-tailed nematode is a fictional parasite and realistically/scientifically, wouldn't really be classified as a nematode. But for the purposes of this fic, shh...
> 
> 4.) Hisoka doesn’t need to go to the hospital because this is HxH and also nen. Or something. Shush. Basically anything I write should be taken as pseudoscience/medicine. I haven't been to a hospital as a patient basically ever. I have no clue how operations ought to go, or how you're really supposed to deal with anything beyond a scraped knee.
> 
> 5.) Subtitle of this chapter: “Illumi, the World-Class Emo”
> 
> 6.) In the seven-years-earlier section, I was fully listening to Adele’s “All I Ask” on repeat. So if the end of this chapter seems uncharacteristically sentimental, that’s why lol.
> 
> 7.) This shit is going somewhere, I swear.
> 
> Please leave a comment/review if you liked this chapter!  
> Also, find me on tumblr at freedommouse.tumblr.com!


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> that's right bitches, i'm still alive

His  _ nen _ was locked, so meditating was not as helpful as usual, but afterwards, Illumi still felt more refreshed. There was still six hours of travel time before the airship was expected to land in Shao Kong.

The sky was tinged orange by the time Illumi opened his eyes.

Hisoka had angled his armchair more to the side, and he was casually observing his fingernails. It was anybody’s guess as to whether he had spent the last hour or so in meditation as well. Perhaps sensing Illumi’s gaze, he looked up and his mouth curved upwards.

He tilted his head just slightly to the left, toward the hallway away from the window.

They went to the airship lounge closest to their room and found that Kalluto and Gon were already there, seated inconspicuously at corner table in the far end of the room, backs to the wall.

Illumi’s eye was calibrated to spot Kalluto, but at his side, Gon sat so still as to barely be noticeable to the casual onlooker –a feat Illumi quietly found impressive, considering Gon had neither assassin training nor  _ nen  _ at his disposable. 

Kalluto, it appeared, was still hooked to his tablet, a barely touched plate of the first-class chicken dinner set in front of him. His mouth was pulled into a frown and he and didn’t bother looking up when Hisoka and Illumi sat down.

Gon had the same dinner before him, half gone. He was chewing slowly, staring at a spot on the table in front of his plate with a troubled expression.

A waiter came and dropped off menu cards.

Illumi filled his out without much contemplation and pushed it to the edge of the table, and they all sat without a word exchanged between each other. The waiter seemed to sense the tense air, because he came for the menu cards without a word and left as quickly as he came.

Kalluto put down his tablet, ate half his plate with neat, efficient cuts and bites, and then stood up. “Well, I’m leaving,” he announced, and was gone with a small flourish of robes.

Gon looked between Hisoka and Illumi and paused, looking as though he might say something, but then he scowled and looked down again, electing to ignore their presence instead. 

Two minutes into this, Hisoka stood up and casually wandered off, and Illumi did not move an inch to watch him go.

Gon’s eyes tracked Hisoka's movement in a direction that suggested that he had left the room altogether. “Your… he’s gone,” Gon said, seeming mildly puzzled.

_ Well of course, _ Illumi thought, itching with exasperation. “He thinks he's being funny.”

“He-?” Gon began, but then he cut himself off. A dark look crossed his face and he looked down, lips pressed into a tight line.

“You needn't say anything,” Illumi assured. Hisoka would return eventually. 

Gon didn't respond, but the next time he stabbed at his plate with his fork was particularly forceful. He chewed aggressively, glancing from Illumi to the air over his shoulder, and back, as though he didn't even want to look at him.

Gon swallowed and his gaze settled on Illumi’s face.

_ Really _ , Illumi was about to say,  _ we don't actually need to hold a conversation. _

“Killua hated you,” Gon said flatly, cutting Illumi off before he could speak.

Illumi blinked.  _ Ah _ . Killua. Of course that would be only topic worth discussing between them.

Gon was looking at him with the same hard stare that he’d been serving Illumi since they met up in Port Caracula. Now, his eyes were narrowed and his fists were clenched. “You… your family poisoned him.”

“Yes,” Illumi said, “Literally.” He paused. Gon’s anger was fierce to begin with, more so when reinforced by a protective instinct. “Our family has poisoned itself for generations,” he said slowly, “We’re assassins. It’s the training.” He didn’t expect Gon to understand.

“That’s not what I mean.” Gon bit out, not yielding an inch. “He was just a kid.”

Naturally. “All Zoldycks were children once.” Illumi said, bemusement mounting internally. He meant to leave it at that, but something pushed him to keep talking, to attempt an explanation; “If Killua’s training was ever more rigorous, it was only because he is the Zoldyck heir… and I wouldn’t expect you to realize this, Gon, but our father coddled Killua.” Years ago, he had concluded that perhaps this was why Killua’s loyalty to the family failed. He had been allowed to learn  _ nen  _ late, and he had been given too much freedom to come and go… Perhaps if...

Gon’s eyes flashed. “So  _ what _ ?” he said, “Maybe you’re all sick in the head and you can’t feel a thing, but you’re more idiotic than I thought if you can justify in your head the damage you did on a twelve year old!” He was starting to shout. “You should’ve just let him go!”

Illumi felt a sneer pass over his features at Gon’s reproach. Frustration bubbled within him. He had no obligation to explain anything to Gon, a foolish, idealistic boy who would never understand –a boy who stole Killua away all those years ago, who.... 

An image of Killua, walking freely freely from the Zoldyck estate with his new companions appeared in Illumi’s mind’s eye. He pushed it out instinctively. “We did let him go,” Illumi replied, the steadiness in his voice faltering, to his annoyance, “Killua has been  _ gone _ for  _ twenty years _ .”

Gon stared at him, scowling, and finally, just shook his head, disgusted. “You can’t take credit for Killua’s freedom. You still hunted for him. And Alluka.”

Illumi clenched his teeth together, suppressing an irritated twitch. He did not often find himself on the defensive in conversations, nor did he like feeling this way, but family was… a sore spot. “If I was hunting for them, then don’t you think I would have come closer to finding them?” Illumi said, biting out each word and narrowing his eyes at Gon.

For once, Gon didn’t have an immediate retort. Instead, he seemed to be considering Illumi’s question, or perhaps his tone. He tilted his head to the side and asked, some of his resentment replaced by bewilderment, “What  _ happened _ ?”

The question felt like the worst sort of insult, and one Illumi did not want to answer, or really consider at all.

It was at that moment that Hisoka returned, dropping into the seat next to Illumi and acting oblivious to the tense air surrounding the table.

“Hm, the food isn’t here yet?” he said, setting a glass in front of Illumi. “Club soda,” he assured, smirking.

“So what are you doing here?” Gon said. “Other than acting as a mediator. I hope you don't mean to start a  _ fight  _ later,”

“Start a fight?” Hisoka repeated sardonically, taking a sip of his own drink, most likely straight gin. He waved a hand as if to say  _ why ever would I do that _ ?

“I requested his assistance,” Illumi said calmly, even though it wasn't true.

“I'm a national treasure,” Hisoka informed Gon, who snorted in response.

“To who?”

The waiter re-appeared just then, setting down two dishes. “Are you finished with that, sir?” He asked Gon.

“Yes,” Gon said, and when the plate was taken and the waiter left, he stood. He paused and looked between Illumi and Hisoka for a moment before shaking his head and leaving.

“It’s a pity you never killed him,” Illumi said, a bitter taste in his mouth.

Hisoka snorted, amused, and angled his chair so that he faced Illumi. “I assume you two had a nice chat while I was gone,”

“Nice?” Illumi scoffed and picked up his glass. The club soda fizzled in his throat, cooling some of his ire. “Correct me if I’m wrong,” he said, “but I believe it’s more than clear that we mean Killua no harm. Freecss and Killua must have split on pretty dismal terms if he’s insisting on coming along to find Killua just so that his face is more welcome by comparison.” 

“Right,” Hisoka said, “Because they broke up.”

Illumi gave him and sharp look and felt his nostril flare.  _ Damn it _ . He scowled despite himself.

Hisoka smirked, pleased with himself, so Illumi said, “I have a job here, and you should refrain from creating distractions in the future. This is business, Hisoka.”

Hisoka took a sip of his gin, eyes laughing because he could see through Illumi’s clipped words to his petty irritation. “Yes, dear,” he said, voice dripping with sarcasm.

Their food arrived, and they ate in a mutual silence that was only broken near the end of the meal when Kalluto entered the room, clutching his tablet to his chest. He took Gon’s abandoned seat and waited a moment for all the attention to shift toward him before he set his tablet down on the table and announced, “I’ve been looking into any information regarding Killua.”

Hisoka raised his eyebrows, “But there’s nothing there, Illumi keeps tabs.”

That was true. Years earlier, Illumi had even done a deep search into the shadow web to find anything on Killua. But he was a Zoldyck, and if Killua didn’t want to leave a trail, he wouldn’t.

“I know,” Kalluto said, “I didn’t expect to find anything on Killua himself, so I contacted Milluki when we were back at Botson Harbor.”

“Really,” said Illumi, tone sharp.

Kalluto met his critical gaze with a steady one of his own. “I had him dig around Gon’s digital past instead, to track his Hunter License.”

Illumi pressed his lips together tight, clamping down on an urge to sneer again, while feeling irritated that he hadn’t done the same.

“Milluki said that Gon’s been on and off the grid pretty sporadically for the last several years,” Kalluto continued, “Occasionally he would show up in coastal towns, probably on supply runs and Hunter expeditions  –I assume that during that period, he and Killua were based in that cabin on Bertha.”

“Supply runs,” Illumi said, “That hardly warrants notice.”

“Considering this is  _ Gon Freecss _ ,” Kalluto replied, rolling his eyes, “His  _ paper trails _ hardly raised any red flags. There’s a couple hints earlier on that he traveled with Killua and... most likely, Alluka. In the last three years, there’s been none of that. That’s when they separated.” 

_ Alluka _ . Illumi pressed on, purposefully avoiding further contemplation regarding her. “So what caught Milluki’s eye then?”

“Well, the Hunter Database isn't totally public to Hunters,” Kalluto said, “According to Milluki, when he went to search for places Gon visited in the last couple years, he noticed that someone else had been tracking Gon, too.”

Something cold and ugly rushed through Illumi. “Someone else is looking for Killua.”

“Possibly.”

A tense quiet fell between them.

Illumi could sense both Kalluto and Hisoka’s eyes on him, anticipating his response. Inwardly, he felt a swell of murderous protectiveness. He hadn’t had the experience in a long time. When he spoke, his voice were steady, but his fury could not be clearer. “Did Milluki find out who was investigating Gon’s history?”

“He’s looking,” Kalluto said. A short pause followed, and then he said, with carefully uttered words, “He did say… briefly, he managed to close in on a possible server in Plynoth.”

“Plynoth.” Illumi repeated. The name rang a bell. He had never been to Plynoth, a miserable, coastal fishing town in the United States of Saherta, but he knew of it.

“There may be no connection.”

Illumi looked at Hisoka, whose only reaction to the revelation was to idly scratch his cheek. His expression was inscrutable.

“And if there is?” Hisoka asked, “What does that mean for Killua?”

Seven years earlier, when tracking the origins of the black-tailed nematode, Milluki had attempted to unravel what little digital networks surrounded the Xiatu Underground Auction. Being blackmarket, information surrounding the auction and its items were scarce. What could be uncovered was heavily obscured through various tricks and trying to track the nematode had turned into a broader attempt to dig into the movements of the auction’s biological items; the tracking history for these objects had been hidden, bounced through server after server after server. Milluki had gotten as far as a server in Plynoth, but once he’d narrowed it down to there, all that he’d been able to recover was a list of specimen, one of which was a similar but ultimately different parasite to the one they were looking for. Plynoth was where they were forced to abandon their search, where Illumi’s wrath was sent to fester without answers.

Kalluto stared at Hisoka, his jaw clenching slightly even while he said nothing.

Illumi spoke up. “It’s not worth speculating right now,” he said, “If there is a connection, we’ll deal with it as it comes up.”

Kalluto nodded and turned his gaze away from Hisoka. He stood up, “Well then, I’ll let you know if Milluki finds anything else.”

When he was gone, Hisoka picked up his glass and finished his drink in a single swig. The glass clunked heavily against the tabletop as he put it down, and for a moment, neither he nor Illumi said a word.

“I’ll kill the bastards,” Hisoka said, calm and light, as though commenting on the weather, “Each and every one of them.”

The words tugged at something within Illumi, a cord that sat deep in his being, ignored more often than not. It made him move before he knew what he was doing, touching the side of Hisoka’s face.

For a moment, Illumi didn’t think about Killua at all, the only thing on his mind a bitter observation that not being able to sense Hisoka’s aura made every touch feel emptier.

Hisoka seemed startled by the hand suddenly cradling his cheek, and his amber eyes grew wide and he stared at Illumi, who hastily pulled his hand away.

Surprise turned to delight on Hisoka’s face, much to Illumi’s chagrin. A delighted Hisoka always meant teasing and wheedling and all other levels of annoying practices.  _ I’ve gone soft _ , Illumi thought regretfully, and turned to look at the white  _ nen _ line, which pointed steadily in the direction of the airship’s movements.

 

#

Illumi remembered his fortieth birthday, and coming home at eight o’clock in the morning from a three-day job. His flight had taken eleven hours.

Hisoka was in the kitchen, leaning against the counter with a coffee and a novel. He always read the trashiest novels he could find, and he didn't so much as glance up as Illumi walked in, tossing his go-bag to the kitchen floor.

“Have you been here all weekend?” Illumi said.

Hisoka looked up, putting his book down and smiled, overly sweet. “Hello, dear,” he said, because he knew how it irritated Illumi, just as it irritated him when Hisoka occasionally managed to peck Illumi on the cheek as a greeting or a goodbye. 

Hisoka thought it was hilarious. 

Illumi went to the coffee pot, pouring a cup even though he preferred tea. He nodded at the novel on the counter. “It’s new,” he said. There was a man on the cover, cast in shadows and wearing a trench coat as he hid around a brick wall. Up the street strolled an unsuspecting couple in high-class attire.

“I was uptown yesterday,” Hisoka said vaguely.

Illumi glanced back at the book.

“It’s a murder mystery. Random citizens begin turning up dead in the streets, and the protagonists traces it all back to a slow-acting poison,” Hisoka said. “From there he begins to connect the seemingly random deaths to a large corporation whose headquarters on the outskirts of the city.”

Illumi poured sugar into his coffee. “Murder mysteries?” he said. “You exist in exact opposition to the moral code of those stories.”

Hisoka grinned. “They’re amusing. Can’t a boy dream about becoming a crime-fighting detective some day?”

Illumi was tired, despite the rest he got on the airship. He allowed a faint curve to cross his lips. “You  _ are _ the crime, Hisoka.”

“You’re too sweet.”

Illumi put his mug down on the table and turned, stepping toward Hisoka. He pulled Hisoka in with a hand against the back of his neck, kissing him.

Hisoka always kissed back immediately, wrapping an arm around Illumi’s waist. “Happy birthday, dear,” he said when they broke apart.

Illumi tried to look Hisoka in the eye, but they were standing too close. He leaned back. “Happy birthday?” he repeated, feeling something weird. Annoyance, thought. “What, do you want to get married or something?”  he said. He had no idea where the words came from. He didn’t even think that they passed through his mind first.

Hisoka laughed.  “I don’t want to marry you,” he said. He kissed Illumi again, harder this time.

Illumi felt the edge of the counter dig into his lower back. “Why not?” he muttered against Hisoka’s lips.

The result was that Hisoka let go of him and took a half step back, not quite distancing himself, since his palms still rested on the counter behind Illumi, an arm on either side of him. “What’s this about?” Hisoka said. There was no smile on his face, no hint of amusement. Usually, it tickled the hell out of him when Illumi said something that had to do with ...with their relationship.

He hated to think about it, to trap whatever they had with words.

“I’m forty years old,” Illumi said. It meant something. He was a Zoldyck.

“I know,” Hisoka shrugged.

“My mother...” Illumi started to say, but stopped. It annoyed him to start off a sentence like that. He was forty years old. “I’m a Zoldyck, Hisoka.”

“I’m aware,” Hisoka said. There was a stony look on his face that only seemed to be growing colder. “Do you need a –an  _ heir _ ?”

Illumi let out a bark of laughter. He imagined having a child, trying to raise it as he was raised, leaving it to wander cavernous halls alone, putting it on a training routine as soon as it learned to walk. He’d helped to raise four siblings, but he couldn’t humor the idea of rearing a child of his own. The thought repulsed him.

“Did you –do you wanna get hitched?” Hisoka asked, bewildered now that Illumi had denied his first suspicion. “Illumi, you don’t, do you?”

Illumi realized the reason Hisoka was staring at him so intently was probably because he had let a mask of impassiveness fall over his expression. He blinked, mostly for Hisoka’s sake, and for the same reason, wrinkled his nose a little. He needed to divert the conversation, which had been his fault to begin with. What in all the circles of Hell had compelled him to say something so ridiculous as ‘ _ why not _ ’?

“Where’s  _ The World Times _ ?” Illumi said, turning and looking around. He spotted a copy lying across the kitchen. He could see the headline from the angle, something about SeverCorp’s stocks plummeting.

“Illumi,” Hisoka said, catching him by the arm as he tried to slip by.

Illumi fought down the instinct to break Hisoka’s hand. It would be pointless and ineffective, not to mention, the reaction would probably just give Hisoka that sort of satisfaction he always got when he managed to provoke a response.  He stared at Hisoka.  _ What _ ?

“Do you want to talk about this?” Hisoka said plainly, slowly, even –as though he thought Illumi required that sort of treatment.

Frankly, it was insulting. “Don’t be ridiculous,” Illumi said, and rather than break Hisoka’s bones, he reeled him in by the front of the shirt and kissed him. Kissing Hisoka was the solution to many problems, he’d learned fairly quickly.  It was most effective in distracting him from most issues and it was a win-win tactic anyway— and— 

 

#

They sat in their compartment, the four of them, silent.

“Hisoka,” Illumi said abruptly. “April twelfth, four years ago...”

Hisoka stared out the window for another beat, then looked over, smirking. He knew the date. “I remember it,” he said. He glanced at Gon and Kalluto and his smirk broadened.

“Do you remember the headline from  _ The World Times _ that day?” Illumi asked, before Hisoka could get any ideas.

“The headline? No.”

Kalluto spoke up, looking at his tablet. “ _ SeverCorp stocks plummet following CEO indictment on racketeering, murder charges _ ,” he read aloud.

“Hanson Murakami. He was sentenced to twenty years,” Gon said, scrunching his face as he tried to remember. “People thought the judge and jury were bribed to hand down a lighter sentence. What does he have to do with anything?”

“I eliminated a Severence Murakami thirteen years ago,” Illumi said.

“Older brother,” Kalluto said. “Hanson took over the business when Severence died.”

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Hisoka said.

“Hey,” Gon broke in, “will someone fill me in? What does this have to do with Killua?”

No one answered for a moment.

Illumi ignored him on principal.

“Nothing, hopefully,” Kalluto said eventually. “But Severence had a revenge hit out on Illumi several years ago. The Murakamis have ties to Shao Kong. There might be something to it.”

“Killua could be in trouble?” Gon said sharply.

Illumi’s eyes were fixed on the white  _ nen _ line cutting across his vision, but he could sense the look Gon threw his way.

“We can't speculate,” Kalluto said.

“But we have to  _ consider _ it. You said someone else was looking for him!”

Gon knew? Illumi sent looked at Kalluto, knowing he would be able to sense his disapproval.

“We're prepared for any outcome,” Kalluto replied.

“Oh,” Gon said, voice rising slightly. “ _ Are  _ we?”

“Gon,” Hisoka said.

Illumi glanced over.

Hisoka didn't seem to have anything else to say, but having gained Gon’s focus, he smiled slowly, lips pressed together. It was a warning look.

Gon scowled back defiantly, but then he seemed to think of something, and some of the righteous anger slipped from his demeanor. He sat back again.

“Look,” Kalluto spoke up, “we'll arrive in Shao King soon, and then we'll find Killua and complete the job.”

Gon’s brow furrowed as he remembered their intentions. He was so dreadfully easy to read. “And if SeverCorp  _ is  _ involved? I got the impression you don’t deal in Shao Kong.”

“If SeverCorp has done something to Killua, then they acted first,” Kalluto replied.

“We'd have the right to kill them all,” Hisoka said, smile growing.

Gon looked at Illumi, expression closing off again.

Illumi stared back this time. “Well?” He said, “Would you try and stop us?”

He expected Gon to react in some way, to grimace or scowl, but he just returned Illumi's gaze. “I know you think you have me figured out,” Gon said steadily, “But you don't know me at all. If Killua needed my help, I would do anything.”

Strong words to throw around, Illumi thought, but he knew Gon meant it, and could follow through with it. Even without  _ nen _ , Gon was lethal.

Illumi didn't have a high regard for Gon in any way, but their views intersected when it came to Killua and potential threats.

He simply nodded, understanding.

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i'm mad bc i wrote the marriage thing before the update but that's what i get for being a fucking lazy ass

**Author's Note:**

> Ages:  
> Kalluto -30  
> Killua -32  
> Illumi -44  
> Hisoka -48
> 
> In "A Horror Not to Be Surveyed" (series part 1), Illumi is 31 & Hisoka is 35. "Amethyst Remembrance" takes place while Illumi is 33 and ends on his 34th birthday.


End file.
